THE 


- ADOLPH LEWISOHN 


= = COLLECTION 
MODERN 
- FRENCH 
_ PAINTINGS 


n - ‘ 


JLPTURES 


The Adolph Lewisohn Collection of 
MODERN FRENCH PAINTINGS 
AND SCULPTURES 


With an Essay on 
French Painting During the Nineteenth Century 


and Notes on Each Artist’s Life and Works 


By STEPHAN BOURGEOIS 


Published by E. WEYHE New York 
1928 


COPYRIGHTED IN 1928 BY E. WEYHE : NE’ 


* 
. . 


’ART EST CONTEMPORAIN 
S’ACCOMMODE MAL AU RETROSPECTIE.” 


ET 


Gustave Courbet 


we 
7 


‘hy 
s4 


THE CONTENTS 


L’ARLESIENNE by Vincent van Gogh (color plate) frontispiece 
PREFACE page x1 
FRENCH PAINTING DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY I 
PAINTINGS 
CARRIERE, EUGENE DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGAR 
1849-1906 Pett 1834-1917 95 
Maternity . 114 Portrait of Jules Finot 98 
Ballet Scene IOL 
CEZANNE, PAUL La Danseuse 102 
1839-1906 173 Femme Couchée 105 
Portrait of a Man Danseuse dans sa Loge 106 
(l’Oncle Dominique) 176 Portrait of M. Duranty 109 
L’Estaque 179 
Portrait of Madame Cézanne 18  DELACROIX, EUGENE 
1798-1863 13 
COROT, JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE Hesiod and the Muse 16 
1796-1875 43 The Captivity in Babylon 19 
Portrait of M. Abel Osmond 46 The Death of St. John 20 
Landscape 49 The Drachma of the Tribute 23 
The Death of Seneca 24 
COURBET, GUSTAVE Aristotle Describes the Animals 27 
1819-1873 52 The Martyrdom of St. Sulpicius 28 
Self Portrait 54 
DERAIN, ANDRE 
DAUMIER, HONORE VICTORIEN __ 1880 oe) 
1808-1879 31 Still Life 220 
The Drinkers (Les Buveurs) 34 Portrait of a Boy 223 


L’Attente a la Gare 37 Portrait of an Englishwoman 224 


VII 


FORAIN, JEAN LOUIS 
1852 
Court Scene 


GAUGUIN, PAUL 
1848-1903 
Landscape 
Ia Orana Maria 
Maternity 
The Bathers 


GOGH, VINCENT VAN 
1853-1890 
L’Arlésienne 


LAURENCIN, MARIE 
1885 


The Hunter 


MANET, EDOUARD 
1832-1883 
The Soap Bubble 
The Beggar 
Portrait of a Lady 


MATISSE, HENRI 
1869 


Portrait de Femme Accoudée sur 


un Fauteuil 

Still Life 

L’Eté—Jeune Femme dans un 
Fauteuil 


MILLET, JEAN FRANCOIS 
1814-1875 
The Woodchopper 


MONET, CLAUDE OSCAR 
1840-1926 

The Seine 

Valley and Cliff (nee 


The Contarini Palace (Venice) 


Waterloo Bridge (London) 


VIII 


1830-1903 


MONTICELLI, ADOLPHE 
1824-1886 


Field and Garden Flowers 


PICASSO, PABLO RUIS- 
1881 


The Dine 
Femme Accoudée 
Fino 


PISSARRO, CAMILLE 


Poultry Market a 
Le Boulevard des Italien 


REDON, ODILON- 

1840-1916 
Still Life hed ie 
Dream Shaggy 


RENOIR, PIERRE A 
nas 1g | 


rats 


"Junction of othe Es ing anc | 


4 TOULOUSE- LAUTREC, HENRI DE VLAMINCK, MAURICE DE 


167 1876 | 227 
; “The Opera ‘“Messalina’”’ at Still Life 228 
a 170 Landscape 231 
SCULPTURES 
MAILLOL, ARISTIDE 
247 1861 253 
oa woman 248 Juno 254 
Pe ie 251 | 


RODIN, RENE FRANCOIS AUGUSTE 


1840-1917 241 
The Danaid: 244 
Ix 
ee tes: 
ia e 
: Ks) i We ary 


PREFACE 


La critique est aisée, et V art est difficile. 

DESTOUCHES 

In the last decades a revolution has taken place in our valuations of modern artists 
and in our conception of art. 

Where are the celebrities who were hailed as masters during the Nineteenth Century ? 
The majority of them are already forgotten and their works are fast sinking into oblivion. 
The men whom our generation hails as masters were in their lifetime the objects of bitter 
attacks, of scorn and of utter neglect. Where are the critics of the Nineteenth Century? 
They have disappeared with the men they helped to make famous, and the doctrines 
which they attacked as revolutionary, or scoffed at as puerile, have become the common- 
places of modern aesthetics. The war which preceded this revolution was of necessity 
fought out on so many battlegrounds, so many banners were waved on both sides, that 
the main issue has at times been obscured. It has been called a war for freedom, a war for 
color, a war against a mechanical system of composition. It has been all of these things, 
but behind them has loomed at all times a larger issue—whether the eye or the mind 
should be the controlling factor in the artist’s approach to reality. 

It is obvious that such a war could not be won ina day. At the outset, art forms which 
boasted an easy visibility, being built on the optical methods of the old masters, were 
naturally more to the liking of the average man than the new language of modern art, 
which demanded a continual adjustment of eye and mind. In the struggle between the 
two conceptions, the majority, and with them the critics, inclined normally to the type 
which most flattered its old habits. Nevertheless, doubts gradually arose about the criti- 
cal wisdom of those who preached with fanatical insistence a rigid adherence to the 
past. Men who fulfilled all the conditions of traditional criticism and who, not twenty 
years before, had been acclaimed as masters by the critics, were soon seen by all but their 
most fervent admirers to be no more than pale reflections of the past, old masters brought 
up to date, dependent on mechanical tricks for their effects. On the other hand, men 
whom twenty years before the whole critical world had dismissed, continued to challenge, 

The war was not won thereby, but one point of great importance had been gained. 
It had become only too clear to both parties that art criticism was not an exact science, 
had not yet outgrown the methods of comparative aesthetics. The conservatives being 
robbed of their mainstay in authority and the radicals freed from their oppression, the 
issue was thrown into the public arena, where it still remains. 

* ¥ % 
In these circumstances, the collector is faced with a problem. Since all critics are at 
loggerheads when it comes to contemporary art, on whom shall he rely? Shall he wait 
until artists have died and time has settled their merits? Or shall he risk his judgment in 
anticipation of future definitions by relying on hisintuition ? The forced choice has brought 
a spirit of adventure into collecting which is slowly turning the decision in favor of the 


xI 


modern artist. Driven by inner necessity to create new conceptions of art, constructive 
artists have always taken risks which have usually led to economic defeat. 

Is there any finer sport than to follow in the tracks of the pathfinder who advances 
into the dark recesses of his mind and illuminates for us with the torch of his perception 
the underlying truth of action? How splendid if everyone should acquire that same taste 
for imaginative adventure, collaborating in this way with artists to reach again the point 
where art and popular phantasy meet in folk art. 

To live—with and for one’s time—to create art, or, if fate has refused us the gift of 
artistic creation, to discern the spark as soon asit flies from the artist's mind, to follow the 
growth of men who are making history, is the greatest adventure which life offers to us. 

+# # % 

The collection which is described in this volume was started about forty years ago in a 
purely independent way. Gradually acquiring a personal method of discerning different 
gradations of quality, the collector has expressed in the selection of the paintings and 
sculptures his reaction to contemporary life and art. Finding his opinion confirmed or 
reversed with time, he has built, by further additions and eliminations, an ensemble which 
today covers practically the whole field of modern French art, and affords unusual 
Opportunities to the student to familiarize himself with the development of modern art 
thinking and methods of art collecting. 

This publication has been undertaken to further the study of art problems, especially 
in relation to the functioning of the artist’s mind face to face with optical reality. 

The attempt has here been made to regard the subject entirely from the viewpoint of 
the artist instead of through the retrospective reactions of the spectator, as has been done 
heretofore, except by a few artists themselves and psychologists like Freud and his 
followers. The new direction of criticism indicated by them has been elaborated in the 
present volume, showing the sequence of styles as the result of psychological causes. 

In the critical analyses of the most constructive artists of our time, the writer has tried 
to render in strong relief the considerations and impulses (‘‘motifs’ as Gauguin called 
them) which drove these men to creative action. To this end, the writer has been tempted 
to undertake an excursion into the past and examine the trend of thought underlying 
western art, and on the other hand, to lift here and there, with hesitation, the veil of the 
future. 

The writer proceeds on the premise that art creation, in spite of classifications, is an 
uncharted sea—full of surprises and dangers. The reason may be found in the imperfect 
knowledge of our mind. So long as the nautical instruments are not scientifically known 
and their use perfected, art criticism will also remain in the circle of subjective opinion, 
where it has navigated since the days of the first art historians. 

I confess that retrospective aesthetics are a source of great enjoyment to us. It is human 
to enjoy with the eyes of the past, but if art criticism wishes to become constructive, it 
must not be limited by retrospection but must rather advance courageously beyond the 
limits of comparative aesthetics. Art history—and this is its greatest achievement—has 


XII 


discovered for our enjoyment and knowledge, islands and continents (works of art) which 
have arisen in the past through volcanic action from the bottom of the psychic ocean, 
but the nature of the forces which flung up those islands, conditioning at once the 
manner and the period of their flowering, is unknown to us. 

Weare still in a state of classification which limits our aesthetic notions to standards 
of one period or one country. The time is coming when classification must be utilized 
in a deeper and wider sense, going beyond personal enjoyment, to help, instead of im- 
peding, the creative faculties of coming generations. 

The problem which faces us is to make art criticism a constructive force, and give it 
the power to recognize rising talent in the shortest possible time. Art criticism can im- 
measutably aid the growth of art by encouraging artists to develop to the full their facul- 
ties and powers. It has not done so during the last century, because most critics, with 
the exception of Baudelaire, Duret and a few others, have recklessly condemned every 
fresh advance in art, because their own retrospective psychology was not alert enough 
to readjust itself to the forward motion of contemporary art. In fact, art has only grown 
despite general criticism, through the efforts of eminent artists eager to analyze their 
own minds in relation to the functioning of art. The mind, in its creative operation, was 
discovered by those artists and art purged by them of line mechanism, one of the most 
destructive defects inherent in naturalism as employed until then, which had restricted 
creative spontaneity for centuries, except in the hands of unusual personalities. The result 
was the killing of folk art altogether. The compositional methods of the Classicists 
were replaced by the Romanticists with a color system operating through the oppo- 
sitions of dark against light values; to be changed again into warm and cool oppositions 
by the Impressionists. In this way, painting gradually returned to its normal function 
—the spontaneous fusion of color and form—through the exclusive insistence on color- 
istic unity, which automatically killed mechanical optics and resulted finally in abstract 
naturalism. 

Men like Delacroix, Daumier, Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Seurat, Henri 
Rousseau and the rest, were not only great artists, but above all, thinkers in psychological 
and aesthetic terms, and must therefore be considered not only the fathers of modern 
art but of modern criticism as well. Applying their processes of thinking, this critical 
attempt has been made, and if this volume is instrumental in advancing the clarifying 
process which is under way, its purpose will have been amply fulfilled. 

Special thanks are due for many of the guiding ideas underlying this publication to 
those artists with whom I have collaborated more or less for years and whose creative 
methods I had the opportunity to follow at close range: Oscar Bluemner, Emile Branch- 
ard, Vincent Canadé, Alfeo Faggi, Arnold Friedman, Stefan Hirsch, Gaston Lachaise, 
Robert Laurent, Dr. Stan, Joseph Stella, Maurice Sterne and Jennings Tofel. Mr. Guy 
Eglington’s correction of the manuscript was very helpful in making this volume more 
readable. Most of the photographs for reproduction were made by Mr. William McKillop. 


XIII 


FRENCH PAINTING DURING THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 


On plaisante facilement sur les oeuvres d'art nouvelles. Cela 
dispense de les comprendre. GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE 


I 

The gradual conquest of the world of matter during the later centuries has partially 
obscured the action of new forces which were released from bondage through evolution 
and revolution in the different countries of the western world. Freedom of conscience 
and opinion have swung the pendulum of living, thinking and acting in the opposite 
direction from mass beliefs, making the individual master of his own mind, formerly kept 
in ignorance of itself through restrictive systems of thought. The individual has become 
in this way his own center of activity, generating energy with such rapidity as the west- 
ern world had never known. This energy was partly canalized through the adaptation 
of matter to an increase of knowledge and comfort, but once the appetite for material 
knowledge had been sufficiently advanced, this same energy attacked the mind and its 
manifold manifestations, in search of a new psychic equilibrium. 

The clarifying process resulting from research into the spheres of the mind has left its 
mark on the art of our time. Especially during the last hundred years, art has moved 
slowly from decorative arrangements of optical impressions to the creative expression 
of the mind’s dynamic perception. Parallel with the work of a few leaders who ac- 
complished this great advance, appeared a critical literature through which the conflict 
between old and new ideas was thrown into the public arena to be analyzed, defended 
or repulsed, until a body of more definitive ideas could advance the problem. 

Thus the operation of the artist’s mind began to reveal itself with ever increasing 
clearness. The movement was expedited through the invention of photography, which 
demonstrated with great suggestiveness the difference between optical seeing, or obser- 
vation, and mental perception—that is, the difference between reality as the eye sees it 
and the world of action as the mind perceives it. The principle “‘true to nature” which 
had dominated art since the Renaissance and driven artists for three hundred years to 
concentrate on external reactions, dissolved in the renewed insistence on the mind's 
powers and faculties. 

Reality, which had seemed until then an “‘absolute’’ in itself, dimmed into uncertain 
notions, which could be neither exactly gathered nor controlled. The eye showed its im- 
perfections, and artists and scientists came to the conclusion that most of the facts and 
objects surrounding us escape our attention. Who has not noticed, for example, that the 
eye absorbs incompletely or in a fragmentary way ? Let us turn on a light ina dark room, 
switch it off immediately, and note how many objects we have seen. At the utmost five 
or six, and those only in fragments. Time is necessary to see and register all the objects 


ina given space. The eye does not see simultaneously but operates progressively in carry- 
ing facts to the mind, and in the meantime, everything—light, objects, organism and 
ourselves— have changed. 

Are we not continually surprised to find people different than we imagined they had 
looked before? Who has not confessed to himself that he has been blind to everyday 
occurrences? Fragments of conversation and of thoughts reappear continually on the 
surface of the mind; words and sentences come and go, faces and gestures become clear 
and disappear. People act and speak to us in rare moments with a clarity of motive and 
impulse hitherto unnoticed, and in moments of keenest perception passing events condense 
in our mind—the dramatic element of a scene reaches perfect equilibrium and a simul- 
taneous mind picture is established. 

Mental experiences of this kind happen to us daily. In fact, we are working continually 
to readjust optical observation and mind perception without being conscious of it. The 
mind, therefore, in its highest activity uses the sense organs as instruments to center them 
on the fundamental action of life. 

The dynamic forces underlying external effects escape the observation of the eye in the 
rapid changes of nature rushing through time. Before the vast spectacle of the tide, the 
eye receives the impression of waves, but is unable to reach the cause which forced them 
into motion. The mind, on the other hand, is concerned primarily with causation, as- 
sembling the disparate effects of nature in the centralizing wish for fundamental unity. 

II 
Reality of the eye or reality of the mind, which of the two is truth? 

Certitudes, dreams, wishes, all our notions are in a ‘“perpetuum mobile,” and man must 
appeal continually to his mind to induce the fleeting picture to stay. Ideas and works of 
art indicate man’s advance into the realm of his mind. Symbols of permanence in a chang- 
ing reality of the senses, they have served as towers from which he has been able to con- 
template or renew objectively the sublime spectacle of creation, which takes place be- 
hind the veil of appearance. 

Hopes of ultimate rest—he finds in them the unity of a higher order, which the fleeting 
picture, presented to him by nature, refuses to his wish. 

Artists have traveled through the centuries the road of ascending and descending 
truth—have fallen from the heights of dynamic abstraction, through the joy of ferment- 
ing matter into mechanical contraction; to rise upward into abstraction again to a per- 
fect balance of vision and perception—following the trend of mind of each period. Art 
has, in fact, illustrated the level of visional activity, changing from century to century, 
swinging upward and downward between optical reactions and mental perception. 

III 
Rome’s art is our nearest analogy for showing the decline from organic perception into 
external arrangements, and parallel with Roman decadence we see the growth of ideas 
which carry optical notions back into mental abstraction. 


2 


In Catacomb, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic art, reality is again abstracted into 
perceived unity, reaching its high mark in the art of the mosaic and stained glass makers, 
the cathedral builders, and Arnolfo de Cambio, Cimabue and Cavallini, to return with 
Niccolo Pisano, Giotto and Duccio back toward notions of optical effects. The joys 
of surfaces and of textures reappear (Simone Martini, B. Daddi), followed by the use of 
light and shadow (Taddeo Gaddi), developing forcibly into roundness (Orcagna), which 
in turn breaks dynamic form-cohesion. To control form-diffusion, an optical system 
called perspective, is employed (Ghibertiand Masaccio), a system of lines converging to 
one point, which only theoretically exists in space but not in fact — space being subject to 
the transforming action of time. Through perspective, line composition became essential 
and the function of color consequently changed — especially with the appearance of 
Leonardo da Vinci— from luminuous projection to light absorption. 

Once on the road of optical dissection and absorption, naturalism seems to have lost 
its bearings. An irresistible Fata Morgana drew artists deeper into the quagmire of 
Nature, and in spite of the forceful attempts to combine abstraction with greater nat- 
uralness byAngelico, Domenico Veneziano, Paolo Uccello, Sassetta, Piero della Francesca, 
Antonello da Messina, Giorgione and the imaginative Flemish Realists culminating in 
Brueghel the Elder, the increasing curiosity of their contemporaries to master Nature’s 
enigma from the outside ended virtually in mechanization. To exorcise the storm, which 
drew the artists of the Renaissance into its vortex, the antique discipline of well ordered 
optical contours, flowing in harmonious interrelation, was revived by the Classicists 
(Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo). The apparent contest of attracting and repelling 
forces rushing into space was disciplined by them through contour composition, and coy- 
ered with the artificial veil of proportional beauty. Since neither life nor art accommodates 
itself to sucha flattering deception, the revival of Classicism ended in histrionic gestures. 

Yet the gradual dissolution of the old world conception, which was naturally followed 
by a dissolution of art, contained in itself constructive elements which could in time 
solidify into a larger truth, capable of producing a new flowering. The Biblical story of 
the creation, partly scientific, partly imaginative, which had been the basis of mass 
psychology and folk art, commonly called primitive art, had died. Out of the ruins 
gradually arose a new idea—the idea of the autonomous individual, master of his destiny 
and of nature. 

Artists thereupon began to study each individual. phenomenon of nature— organic 
and inorganic matter subject to light, temperature and psychical contacts, altogether 
the effects of pressure from without, produced through the contest of attraction and 
repulsion— striving to master nature’s forces and express its instincts (Venetian, Spanish 
and Dutch schools). Through line contraction, which the Classicists had imposed 
on nature, the analytical approach of the Realists could only lead to a further process 
of absorption, which they strove to temper by the opposition of light and dark. The 
movement culminated in Velasquez, Hals, Rubens and Vermeer. 


On the basis of growing materialization, Greco and Rembrandt, endowed with a pro- 
found penetration of psychic life, felt the striving of all individual forms to reach 
beyond the illusion of individual sense reactions. The drama of contesting forces was for 
them only one aspect of a greater wish for fundamental unity, expressing itself through 
pressure from within, and color regained, in their hands, part of its former radiating 
power. Both artists consequently opened new vistas in the direction of a larger spacial 
concept through the luminosity of their tonal texture. Unfortunately, instead of pro- 
ducing progressive thinkers, only imitators followed in their tracks, and art fluctuated 
for one hundred years more between line classicism and color realism, until the Romantic 
painters profited by Rembrandt, and the Impressionists by the ideas of Greco. . 

IV 
As the West had not developed an intellectual discipline which, like the Chinese art 
canons, could have reinforced and clarified the mental attitude of artists, art was un- 
able until the French Revolution to choose an issue from which a new style could emerge. 
The final political liberation of the individual stimulated mental energy to an accel- 
erated pace, which led to methods of creative thinking such as western art had never 
before known. 

Simultaneous with the French Revolution began the final contest between Classicism 
and Realism. Two artists led the struggle: David and Goya. 

To David the further development of art consisted in a complete return to the Classi- 
cism of the past. Goya went to the other extreme; he was the man of his time, living the 
life of his contemporaries, describing with bluntness and daring the terrific explosion of 
passions, which characterized the struggle between old beliefs and individual freedom. 

David is known as the father of Classicism, preaching the return to Poussin’s art — 
optical line arrangement, physical accuracy, anatomy and all the rules which the system 
implies. Backed by an autocratic government which sensed in his art a return to disci- 
pline and submission, and which was flattered by the political comparison of the régime 
to the glories of Rome, he inaugurated a period of retrospection, which has colored 
practically the whole Nineteenth Century, and has affected education and appreciation 
of art to such an extent that the mind of the average man is still today distorted by 
the one-sided teaching of retrospective aesthetics. For David and the Classicists the 
Revolution had never taken place; the human heart and mind had not changed, or, if 
it had changed, iron rules would bring it, in their opinion, back to reason. Perfection 
of proportion and of line-arabesques, expressing the wish to please the eye of the spec- 
tator, the avoidance of passion and of those conflicts which were stirring a struggling 
humanity, became the basic rules of their method. 7 

David did not understand the psychological effect of line mechanism and to what end 
it would lead in the long run. Classicism fundamentally reflected the conservative trend 
of mind, arresting in mechanical rigidity the course which Naturalism had been taking 
since the beginning of the Renaissance. We who live in the fully developed machine age 


4 


can discern the significance of this trend when we study the effect of the machine on 
contemporary thought. 

The invention of the machine was the result of the rediscovery of nature and of matter 
after one thousand years of ascetic idealism. Once on the trail of this discovery, humanity 
threw itself with the same force into the study of nature as that with which it had formerly 
plunged into ascetic abstraction. Yet while nature is creative, it is also destructive. The 
men of the Renaissance, therefore, applied themselves to mastering its forces, their efforts 
producing the machine, which gave, on the one hand, a greater amount of comfort to the 
western world, but on the other produced in the modern mind through the overwhelming 
feeling of its attractiveness, a curious orgiastic phenomenon—the fear of nature and the 
love of rigidity. It is only natural that man should be tempted to find also behind his fear 
of nature a higher reason and seek to express it in art. Somehow, man always tries to 
justify his desires, be they psychologically constructive or destructive, as emanating 
from the lofty heights of vision and inspiration. The fear of nature has produced in art 
a curious flowering, leading from the mechanistic tendencies of the Classicists during 
the Renaissance (coincident with the first mechanical discoveries) to the Academicians 
of the Nineteenth Century (with a new era of mechanical inventions arriving) to find 
its frankest exponent in the Cubists, Futurists, and others, who, after having imparted 
the ultimate expression of the mechanistic philosophy, which led them to orgiastic fear 
complexes similar to those expressed in Negro totems, are endeavoring in our day to retire 
again into the disciplined fold of Ingres’ linear mechanism. 

Vv 
Goya was the first to revolt against mechanization, which has invaded today our very 
homes, affecting architecture, painting, sculpture and every object surrounding us. The 
realistic and impressionistic movements were the outgrowth of his initiative, which led 
finally to the rediscovery of abstract naturalism. 

Goya was the passionate judge of his time, of its weaknesses and qualities. He grasped 
with keenness and lucidity the forces which incited his contemporaries to action, setting 
them down with a breath of realism and objectivity which still today shocks the average 
spectator. Although a child of the classical past, he gradually dissolved line compo- 
sition, etc., substituting for it the forceful interaction of color, functioning in sonorous 
harmonies and in accordance with the effects of natural light. In this way he started the 
process of coloristic liberation which led ultimately through Constable and the French 
Romanticists, Realists and Impressionists to an enrichment of tonal variety such as had 
not been known since the Fifteenth Century. Goya’s influence is so manifold that, like 
Daumiet’s, his achievement has never been recognized at its full value. 

French art found in Goya the cornerstone on which to build the art of the Nineteenth 
Century. Following his artistic revolution which replaced the blind search for beauty 
by the search for truth, Géricault and Delacroix adapted his viewpoint, and through 
them French art gradually emerged from the clutches of Classicism. Still relying partly on 


5 


line arrangement, their coloristic vitality transcended the rules imposed by the Classicists; 
consequently, they reached through their rejuvenated medium a forceful expression of 
reality and dramatic truth. 

The movement with which their names have been associated is generally called Roman- 
ticism, because both artists derived most of their subjects from the literature of the 
past. Like all classifications, however, the romantic attribution is misleading, as Courbet 
has pointed out. Indeed, their trend toward coloristic and psychological realism was 
ultimately more effective in paving the way for a new art than their trend toward 
literary Romanticism. . 

Standing on the ridge between the accumulated wealth of a great past and the apparent 
barrenness of a materialistic future, it was natural for them to seek once more, before it 
was too late, the delight and comfort of vast conceptions, which had warmed the hearts 
of past generations. Science was advancing with irresistible force, shattering the old 
dreams, which the Romanticists were loath to leave behind because they possessed 
elements of beauty. The disease which resulted from historical regrets has been called 
“la maladie du passé’’; it spread like an epidemic during the century, only to gradually 
disappear in our time. | | 

Delacroix’s greatness consisted in facing both sides of the question at the same time. 
Like Rembrandt, he understood that all dreams rise fundamentally from reality, and 
that if we wish to keep their life force we must reach again the realistic root which 
urged them into vital action. 

Daumier, his contemporary, was even more a child of his time. The first absolutely 
modern French artist, he realized that the current method of studying art directly from 
nature was not a satisfactory way of acquiring the métier of an artist. He felt intuitively 
the difference between the aspect and the internal action of a subject. The past did not 
interest him and he was ready to discard it entirely for a new start. 

Courbet and Corot (the latter during his early period) followed Géricault’s lead in 
stating dramatic reality with greater clarity and simplicity, removing from art all 
rhetorical effects; and in 1846, Ingres, the last exponent of Classicism — although his 
quality consisted in being fundamentally a Realist, of which he was himself not aware 
—was forced to the confession that the Classical method was eliminated from the con- 
test. Still Ingres’ linear influence lingered in Degas, Whistler and Puvis de Chavannes, 
and is again active in the younger French artists of today in search for optical discipline. 

VI 
Painting proceeds henceforth on two lines of thought —by trying to enrich itself 
psychologically, and by widening space physically. The latter tendency derived its initial 
impulse from the discovery that nature must reveal itself without embellishments or 
flattery, and that color must be in accordance with the laws of natural light. Thus art 
becomes completely naturalistic before rising again into abstract objectivity. 

Manet is associated more than any other artist with the liberation from the composi- 


6 


tional system, which had produced space-rigidity, through his efforts to abolish the 
effects of light and shadow, and through the introduction of warm and cool tones to 
establish a unified color composition. The progress resulting from this discovery gave rise 
to the idea of abstract space, which Manet formulated in the questions: ‘Shall form be 
conceived from the outside inward, or the reverse, from the inside outward 2” and ‘‘Shall 
art conform to sensations or emotions?’’— questions which necessarily touch all art 
problems at their root. Manet started therewith the discussion which has done most to 
advance the progress of modern att. 

To achieve his coloristic reform, Manet carried his easel into the open air where he 
applied himself to the study of light and atmosphere with the result that all the heavy 
tones of the official school gave way to the infinite variety of delicate nuances so 
characteristic of the country around Paris. Already Corot and all the members of the 
school of Fontainebleau had painted in the open. But Corot abandoned early in his 
career the attempt to catch ‘‘la couleur vraie,”’ returning to the preconceived ideas of the 
school, how nature should look, by pressing his observations and ideas into the accepted 
coloristic mold. 

Claude Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley enlarged the possibilities of Manet’s “plein- 
air’ method to unsuspected richness, inducing nature to reveal in their art the subtle 
charms of attraction and enchantment. Of this group, Renoir, more than any other artist, 
led the new paganism to unknown heights by adopting Greco’s subtle rotation of warm 
and cool tones to the touch of his seductive brush. Like a magician he urges the spectator 
to abandon himself to the effusive call of his art and to be initiated into the mysteries 
of Divine Nature—the modern Venus. 

Parallel with Renoir, Cézanne, a former member of the same group, grasped all that 
Daumier, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet and the Impressionists had achieved, and profiting 
by each artist’s essential contribution, realized the psychological program outlined by 
Manet by reversing the naturalistic use of color, which tends to absorption, to make it 
again projective. He attacked, in fact, the problem from the inside outward, completing 
the task which he had set for himself of rendering Impressionism solid. 

A new phase in the development of painting was begun through the ideas of Gauguin, 
van Gogh, Seurat and Lautrec. These artists recognized that all the individual forms 
contained in a picture could never be completely homogeneous until the element of time 
inherent in optical naturalism was removed, and the idea of simultaneous action and 
thythmic composition approached their final solution. Proceeding by reduction of model- 
ing and by the use of complementary tones, they arrived at a more or less flat juxtaposi- 
tion of color forms in preparation for abstraction. 

Matisse, a descendant of the Impressionistic School, and Picasso, who derived from 
Lautrec, advanced the problem a step farther by discovering that only abstract mind 
pictures are complete. Yet both, operating by reduction from the outside, missed in this 
way the essential point that nature denies abstraction to direct optical notions. 


To overcome these difficulties, Picasso adopted Cézanne’s statement that all pictorial 
form is based on the underlying use of geometric forms. Consequently, he contracted 
his naturalistic observations into a mechanistic arrangement, of a high nervous tension, 
in the belief that he had rediscovered abstract art. The movement which he started was 
called Cubism, and has ended in an impasse, as have all the other “isms” which 


followed. ee 


The decisive step leading to the solution of all the problems which had agitated the 
artists of the Nineteenth Century was taken by an artist who had the advantage of not 
having passed through the Impressionist and Classicist training, and for this reason did 
not need to rid himself of his schooling. 

Henri Rousseau, a musician in a military band and later an official on the Paris city 
toll, rose without difficulty from the vision of a child to the monumentality of a new 
abstract style. Not having received any schooling derived from the imitation of nature, 
the difference between optical and mental seeing was no problem for him. His mind 
was able to concentrate with ease on nature, absorbing facts like a magnifying glass, 
assembling them in one fusing center from which he projected them into mind pictures 
organized in well balanced masses. 

Abstract naturalism found in him its greatest exponent, not a naturalism of the senses 
but of perception. Contemplating life in absolute objectivity, he not only leads us 
through nature’s fundamental impulses and conflicts, but going to the root of action, 
reveals the dispassionate urge toward final unity to which in our mind all others are 
subordinated. His art can, therefore, only be compared, if general comparisons are pet- 
mitted, with the folk-art of Egypt, early Greece, the Middle Ages and the Orient when 
art was a child of the mind to which nature owed allegiance, indicating that modern art 
is transforming itself gradually into a folk-style. Rousseau’s importance as an abstract 
observer of nature is even now little appreciated. Living like a peasant in the intimacy of 
nature’s processes he not only felt all forms in their striving, sprouting and transforming 
vitality, but transcending perception, he created like the God of the fable, out of the 
depth of his phantasy, new organisms of radiant beauty which nature in its capricious 


fertility could have invented. ve 


Most artists of today still live in the past, which has been a slave to nature, and the 
possibilities of creative thinking to be applied in the teaching of art are yet little under- 
stood or practically unknown. Aesthetics or rules derived from the art of the past will be 
of little avail to complete the art of the future. Complete mental control will be necessary 
to this end; a form of order not the discipline of Ingres, which was purely optical and 
external, but a mastery of the mind which will lead talent from childhood to complete 
maturity without the necessity of unlearning optical tricks, as all the creative artists of 
the Nineteenth Century were forced to do. A science of thinking in terms of creative 
images in place of retrospective and optical naturalism is a necessity of the first order. 


8 


If we wish to see talent reach maturity in the shortest time and way, we must aban- 
don the wasteful attempt to raise in a century innumerable “picture manufacturers”’ 
(as Hogarth called them) for whom art is more or less a game of tricks and who are 
forgotten immediately after their death. 

That such a science is possible and will be of the greatest service has been proved by 
the example of China. To the student of Chinese art, Hsich Ho’s (Sixth Century) rules of 
mind discipline are well known. 

In China, the artist first studied nature in its functional activities and prepared himself 
for creative action through concentration of all his faculties. The artist was consequently 
familiar with the way of all living things, with the action of the animal world, of human 
and floral life; and perceiving the interrelation and continuity of the whole he rose with 
ease above the apparent spectacle of conflict, and waited until his conception was born 
spontaneously in the calm heights of his vision. He realized that working directly from 
nature offered innumerable obstacles, and he considered it therefore a heresy to attempt 
the use of such a wasteful method. 

An intensive study of this problem by artists and psychologists will probably lead us 
to a constructive method, which will be useful in overcoming the present confusion and 
do away with our tentative systems of teaching which can only produce retrospective 
imitators and deprive the student of his self-confidence. 

The Nineteenth Century has cleared the way for the new art which is coming. Science 
and individualism are leading to a new conception of life, out of which a new mass- 
psychology and folk art is arising. Ascending again the steep hill from optical obser- 
vation to abstracted reality, struggling against ostracism and derision on account of the 
fight against line and color mechanism, French art was the first to reach the new out- 
look, from which it appears devoid of artificialities and retrospective restrictions—the 
free expression of the artist and his time. Once this fact is generally recognized, we 
approach a period when all the arts of all countries will fuse in one common language, 
irrespective of racial differences, capable of expressing with clarity the dreams and ideas 
of humanity in the simple terms of folk art. 


EUGENE DELACROIX 


Eugéne Delacroix was born April 26, 1798 at Charenton, near Paris, the third child of a 
former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the same name under the Directoire, who was also 
one of the judges who condemned Louis xvi to death. 

Through his mother, Victoire Oeben, he was the grandson of the famous “‘ébéniste,”’ 
Oeben, who worked for the Pompadour. An uncle, Henry Francois Riesener, a painter 
and pupil of David, induced Delacroix to enter the studio of Guérin. 

In 1821 Delacroix made his first appearance before the public with a masterpiece, ““The 
Bark of Dante,” which was followed shortly by the ‘Massacre of Chios.” A three months 
visit to London in 1826 brought him in contact with Constable and his palette of nat- 
ural tones. In 1832 he made a trip to Morocco, which was followed by a series of oriental 
compositions painted in glowing tones. 

In 1833 he started the decorations for the Chambre du Roi at the Palais Bourbon, 
and from 1836 to 1847 he completed the decorations for the library of the Palais Bourbon. 

The following dates are important in the career of Delacroix: 

1840, The Bark of Don Juan 

1841, The Conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders 

1849, Decorations of the Louvre Ceiling 

1853, Christ on the Lake of Genezareth 

1855 to 1861, Frescoes at St. Sulpice 

Delacroix died on August 13, 1863, in Paris. 


C'est la matiére qui est Vesclave del artiste, elle lui appartient. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE [Translated by Baudelaire] 

Born in a period of transition, between the reactionary past and the individualistic 

future, Delacroix’s eye swept backward, embracing with a last powerful glance all the 

ideas of the past in art, literature, religion, history and science. He profited by all of them; 

he extracted the last sparks of beauty and greatness from literature and epos, but finding 

himself face to face with a realistic age, he saw the coming development with a deeper 
understanding of reality. 

Constable’s realistic landscape shaped the physiognomy of his own landscapes; Goya's 
example infused into his portraits the idea of the man as he is and acts, devoid of arti- 
ficiality. 

Delacroix was abhorred by the Classicists more than any other artist because he 
definitely changed the current conception from line arrangement to color composition. 
He saw, like Michelangelo, that a work of art was born out of color matter. Delacroix 
was, therefore, to them the great revolutionary who was destroying art forever. Seen 
at a distance of three quarters of a century, the hatred which Delacroix’s activity pro- 
voked seems incomprehensible today. Still the struggle which he, Géricault, Daumier 


13 


and Courbet started, but which has been almost entirely credited to Delacroix, has not 
yet ended, and when we read Ingres’ statement made in 1846 on the occasion of a pro- 
jected exhibition, we are reminded of the disputes which are still heard in our time, 
denoting that the battle for aesthetic freedom is still raging with undiminished fervor. 
Ingres at first refused to exhibit, and only yielded on the express condition that his pic- 
tures be separated from all the rest by draperies, if not by walls. ‘““By comparing myself 
with certain of our modern painters, who smell of epilepsy, (with the author of the “Mas- 
sacre of Chios,’ for example) Iam proud to have respected the human form, instead of dis- 
torting, as they do, their figures, making them walk on their heads, and changing the 
holy Virgin and her good angels into Iroquois; I have insisted with violence on my prin- 
ciples, which are the truth, in order to halt the invasion of the barbarians, as before me 
David mastered the rebels holding the field since the death of Poussin. David restored 
the French school through the salutary despotism of his character, but after him revolt 
taised its head again—‘‘ANh! Je ne peux plus voir personne; ne parlons de rien; tout va au 
diable; on a tué la peinture, la mére des arts est morte.’ (Théophile Sylvestre.) 
Ingres’ outcry confirmed the victory of Delacroix’s new direction. For the first time 
in centuries artists dared to speak the language of their minds, irrespective of the past. 
The old masters, who had hovered over the heads of students for ages, condemning the 
majority to artistic impotence, were disregarded, and the young generation proceeded 
henceforth on the new road which Delacroix and his contemporaries had paved for them. 


Delacroix executed, in all, six monumental works, of which the decorations for the 
Chambre du Roi at the Palais Bourbon were the first large order. This order he received 
in 1833 through the influence of Thiers, the famous statesman. Delacroix finished this 
work in 1836 and started in the same year to fill the long hall of thelibrary with large 
decorations in oil. 

His method of adapting himself to the architectonic difficulties of five cupolas proved 
his great resourcefulness. Each composition was considered in hexagonal form, in order 
to fill one-fifth of a single cupola, and every one was conceived in such a wealth of color 
that the rich texture of the whole filled the cupolas with warm harmonies in which the 
forms practically disappeared; in fact, the diversity of his subjects and the forcefulness of 
his phantasy do not allow the spectator to graspin their entirety the different ideas which 
fill the room with dramatic action. As usual, Delacroix sinned through the excessive 
exuberance of his temperament, and unity of subject-matter and architecture was not 
achieved; but he gained instead in each single composition. He described in these decora- 
tions the history of man’s earliest existence, the struggle between man and nature — 
symbolizing altogether the struggle for supremacy between thought and the force of 
instinct. 

All the compositions of the Palais Bourbon are plunged in a delicious blond light. A 
delicate warmth, similar to musical vibrations, permeates his color. Inside this luminous 


14 


envelope events of great dramatic intensity take place;—Salome receives with satisfac- 
tion and terror the head of St. John; Numa converses in the vast terms of philosophy 
with the nymph Egeria. Where in modern art can we find such dramatic desolation and 
crushed hopes as in the captives of Babylon, or the utter hopelessness of Adam and Eve 
driven by a reluctant angel from the light of paradise into darkness ? 

Delacroix revealed in these compositions the great lucidity of his mind and the power 
of his personality. Compared with his other works, the ease with which they were con- 
ceived and executed adds greatly to his achievement. Indeed, in the sketches for the 
library of the Palais Bourbon, we find a different man from the creator of the ‘Bark of 
Dante’ and the ‘Massacre of Chios’ —a man who, in the solitude of his studio, lived 
with intensity through the great moments of history and epos. A lyrical fountain seems 
to have opened in him. Was it the supreme ease of Raphael which fertilized his emotion 
during the Forties and induced him to speak in a lighter vein, or did some intimate 
events in his life, unknown to the historian, modulate the fiery colors of his palette? 
Nobody knows. The fact remains unexplained. 


Reproduced on following pages: 

HESIOD AND THE MUSE 

THE CAPTIVITY IN BABYLON 

THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN 

THE DRACHMA OF THE TRIBUTE 
THE DEATH OF SENECA 

ARISTOTLE DESCRIBES THE ANIMALS 
THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SULPICIUS 


23 


gesture of annunciation, eae in her left a a ea roe 
with the swiftness of a passing wind. E 


On canvas 7 
Height 13% inches, width 17 inches ~ 


16 


The Captivity in Babylon dy Delacroix 


On the bank of a river under a tree sits one of the Israelites, his head lifted up to heaven 
in impotent despair, imploring God for freedom. His wife, wearied from long waiting, 
leans heavily against his shoulder, holding back her child, who tries to escape from the 
Opptessive mood of its captive parents to play with another child stretched out in an 
attitude of lassitude. 


On canvas 
Height 1314 inches, width 17 inches 


ao 


The Death of St. John by Delacroix 


A circular stairway, suggesting the bottom of a bose | 
foreshortened, the body of John is sprawlin | 
proud gesture of defense. Towering above the corps 
leaning on his long two-edged sword, thrusts wich bi 
into the face of the waiting aye ee | 


On canvas 
Height 134 inches, width 17 inches 


20 


—_— 


The Drachma of the Tribute by Delacroix 


Kneeling on the shore of a lake, a fisherman offers to the Centurian the drachma found 
in the fish’s mouth. In the center, St. Peter watches with keen interest the fulfillment 
of Christ’s prediction. A washerwoman, with a basket on her head, bends forward to 
examine the coin, powerfully moved by the miracle. From behind, a man comes running 
to hear the news. All the figures express the excitement of the moment. 


On canvas 
Height 1314 inches, width 17 inches 


23 


The Death of Seneca by Delacroix 


Seneca, nude except for a loin cloth, is held over a large bronze vessel, the veins of his 
arms opened to let life escape. He awaits the end with the stoicism of a philosopher. Two 
attendants, who sustain him, observe with curiosity and awe the gradual death of their 
master. Two soldiers attend the execution. The first, bearing a warrant in his upraised 
tight hand, wears an air of command. The second, Dantesque in feature, looks sadly 
down. To the right are two women mourning, the nearest bowed in grief, the other 
looking toward the philosopher with an air of last appeal. 


On canvas 
Height 1334 inches, width 17 inches 


24 


% 
J 
_ 


Aristotle Describes the Animals by Delacroix 


Seated on a high platform, Aristotle receives peasants who bring their animals for his 
study. A large book on his knee serves to note his observations. Three peasants approach 
from the right bringing goats, sheep, etc., and stare at him with admiration and awe. 
His left hand outstretched, Aristotle awaits in suspense the spontaneous formulation 
of his thoughts, while his searching eyes grasp all the characteristics of each animal. 

The scale of the figures, no less than the spaciousness of their grouping, makes this one 
of the most noble of Delacroix’s compositions. 


On canvas 
Height 134 inches, width 17 inches 


27 


The Martyrdom of St. Sulpicius by Delacroix 


In 1855 Delacroix painted a series of frescos for the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris depict- 
ing the life of its patron saint. The subject of the present sketch was intended for one of 
the frescos. The conversion of this saint to Christianity is ascribed to the prayers and 
exhortations of St. Domitilla, a Patrician Roman lady. St. Sulpicius was finally behead- 
ed during the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117). 

In the foreground of the sketch the saint is seen dressed in white, kneeling with out- 
stretched arms in contemplation of heaven with the Savior and angels in the upper left 
corner bursting forth to give him strength in his martyrdom. The executioner approaches 
from the right to cut his head off with one stroke. Behind the saint the captain of the 
Roman troops orders the execution with a commanding gesture, his horse rising on its 
hind legs, frightened by the lightening burst of the vision. To the left St. Domitilla is 
seen contemplating the miracle with awe. 

Meier-Graefe, writing of Delacroix, makes a statement which applies very well to this 
composition: “Delacroix like all true Frenchmen was an orator. He had Michelangelo's 
mysterious power of suggesting a drama by an arm, leg or piece of flesh.” The composi- 
tion of this little sketch has indeed all the exuberance of an oration, spoken in forceful 
accents by an artist who was able to throw on his canvas, with volcanic energy, luminous 
sentences of vibrating matter expressing the varied gamut of human emotions, playing 
together in apparent confusion to form a perfect equilibrium. 


On canvas 
Height 13 inches, width 10}4 inches 


28 


Me Fie 
‘ 


Rs 


: , ¥ 


HONORE VICTORIEN DAUMIER 


Honoré Victorien Daumier was born February 26, 1808, in Marseilles, the son of a 
window repairer, and incidentally, a poet of small talent. In 1814 his father went to 
Paris to try his fortune as a poet but did not meet with success. 

Honoré Daumier began to make drawings spontaneously as a child. He subsequently 
studied Greek sculpture, as well as Rubens and Rembrandt, at the Louvre; was for a 
short time employed as a clerk by a “‘huissier,” and finally received permission from his 
reluctant father to study art at the studio of Alexandre Lenoir, who was a follower of 
David's theories. 

Daumier, however, found ample food for his mind in the human element in the streets 
of Paris; so he left Lenoir to study life wherever he found it, and to acquire the training 
of a lithographer from his friend Ramelet, in order to make his living. In 1830 he was 
engaged by Philipot for the “Caricature,” and later became a collaborator on the “‘Chari- 
vari.” His political satires soon made him one of the foremost fighters for Republican 
ideas, until the monarchy fell in 1848. During 1836 and 1837 he eae his famous 
lithographic series of Robert Macaire. 

After the revolution of 1848 until the end of his life, he devoted himself entirely to 
painting, which he had always considered his real vocation, but which unfortunate eco- 
nomic conditions had prevented him from following in his earlier years. In 1849 appeared 
his first important picture, ““The Miller, his Son and the Donkey,” (Colonel Wood, Ot- 
tawa) ; in 1851, “Woman Chased by Satyrs,”” (Van Horne, Montreal) and “Don Quixote 
and Sancho Panza going to the marriage of Gamache.”’ 

In 1862 he was re-engaged by the “‘Charivari.”’ 

In 1877 he became blind. He died on Feb. 11, 1879 at Valmondois. 


Daumier has been called the father of modern caricature, because his style, more 
than that of any other artist, has been adopted by practically every caricaturist of our 
day. However, Daumier’s activity as a caricaturist was only a preparation for a much 
wider scope of artistic reform. Having rejected in his youth the academic training — 
which taught art by familiarizing the student with a so-called beauty ideal—he threw 
himself with increased avidity into the turmoil of his age, catching in the public and 
private life of his contemporaries those idiosyncrasies and impulses which drove them 
forward to a new organization of life. In this way he attained a degree of objectivity 
which was unknown since the time of Rembrandt. Daumier was conscious of this rela- 
tionship to the great Realist of the seventeenth century, who remained for decades the 
beacon to which he turned for guidance. In him he found not only the key to his palette 
but also the capacity to reach beyond the demands of his own nature for a wider human 
understanding, and to observe life in a detached way. 


341 


Daumier attacked all the political problems and personalities of France. The gran- 
diloquent representatives of the monarchy, of the bourgeoisie and of parliament pass 
before our eyes like figures in a puppet show, revealing in eloquent gestures their tragic, 
comical and often artificial thoughts and actions. Indeed, no other artist helped so much 
to prick the rhetorical bubble of the monarchy as did Daumier, and his influence was 
even more potent because he stated the truth in a generous spirit which could not be 
misinterpreted by his adversaries. 

The generosity of Daumier’s concept and his detachment from the actual events grew 
with age and experience, and when, during the second part of his career, he left the 
political stage to seclude himself in his simple home for the study of human nature and 
painting, he reached such a degree of objectivity that his color seemed to radiate the 
luminous action of a mind deeply steeped in wisdom and human understanding. 

With him all the dull lacquer-harmonies of the Classicists began to disappear and the 
miracle of his tonal texture produced, in spite of apparent monotony, a richness of vital 
vibration which surpassed in wealth the effects obtained by all his contemporaries. 
Daumier’s strenuous endeavor for actual objectivity was responsible for this achieve- 
ment, and his activity must be considered the turning point of modern psychology in the 
field of art. Being a man of very simple disposition, he was probably as unaware of the 
revolution which his ideas would cause as Henri Rousseau was later. It was left to Manet 
to formulate definitely the problem which Daumier had outlined in his art, pointing out 
the difference between a subject treated from the outside inward and from the inside out- 
ward. When finally Cézanne arrived on the stage he was confirmed by Daumier in this 
basic viewpoint; he was thus able to carry objectivity to greater cohesiveness, pointing 
the way to actual mental abstraction, which was rediscovered by Rousseau. 


32 


Reproduced on following pages 


THE DRINKERS 


TENTE A LA GARE 


D 


"AT 


L 


The Drinkers (Les Buveurs) 6y Daumier 


Two young men, seated at opposite sides of a table on rustic benches under a tree, are 
seen in sharp relief against a wall aglow with the reflections of the setting sun. Dusk is 
descending and one of the men has sunk into deep thought, expressing in his attitude the 
weight of life and struggle for existence. In sharp contrast to him his friend, alert in 
every gesture, fills his glass with wine. On the right a hilly landscape settles down to 
rest and sleep. 

This little masterpiece, of the keenest human understanding, is painted in monochrome; 
in gradations of brown which swing from the most delicate clear nuances to the full 
sonorities of deep tonalities. Daumier showed himself in this work the master of obser- 
vation.and color composition, demonstrating that painting is not bound by lines but is 
the result of a forceful play of tonal masses. 


On panel 
Height 14% inches, width 11% inches 
Signed in the left corner: H. D. 


FORMER COLLECTIONS 
Mme. Daubigny, Paris 
Henry Rouart, Paris 


PUBLISHED 


“Daumier’’ by G. Geffroy, page 26 
EXHIBITED 


Daumier Exhibition, Paris, Durand-Ruel Galleries, 1878, No. 49, belonging to Mme. 
Daubigny 


34 


L’Attente a la Gare by Daumier 


No other artist in our time has better understood the subtle action of a crowd in motion 
than did Daumier. In this small picture he has concentrated with great forcefulness on 
the chaotic action of a crowd on the alert, like animals in the woods; watchful, keen, 
uncertain, full of fear, they rub elbows not knowing if they touch a friend or a foe. All 
are full of curiosity, trying to graspina glance the thoughts and feelings of the passersby. 

Although the tones are, coloristically speaking, subdued, they emanate a rich and 
heavy forcefulness, graphically characterizing the interrelation of instinct forces which 
give dramatic intensity to a crowd in motion. 


On panel 
Height 8% inches, width 13 inches 
Signed in the right corner: H. D. 


Another version in oil of the same subject was formerly in the collection of Mr. Roy, 
and a water color is in the Gonides Collection, (South Kensington Museum) London. 


oy 


ADOLPHE MONTICELLI 


Adolphe Monticelli was born in Marseilles, October 14, 1824. As a child he showed 
a great passion for music and painting, and when he reached the age of reason, he 
definitely chose the latter, preferring it as his future career. 

At the age of fifteen he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts of his home town, working 
under the direction of the painter, Loubon. After a trip to Italy in 1849 he decided to 
establish himself in Paris. There he met Diaz, with whom he developed a warm friend- 
ship. Through him he came in contact with the world of artists, and when the second 
Empire was established by Napoleon m1, Monticelli found in the life of the court a great 
stimulus to create those rich and colorful masterpieces for which he became known. 

Toward the close of the reign of Napoleon 111, he was on the high road to fame; Dela- 
croix praised his work very highly. Then came the catastrophe of 1870 and the fall of the 
Empire, and Monticelli returned to Marseilles, never to leave his home town again, turn- 
ing from Romanticism to Naturalism in his art. In this way he became the forerunner of 
van Gogh. 

Monticelli died in Marseilles, June 29, 1886. 


Reproduced on following page: 


FIELD AND GARDEN FLOWERS 


De 


Ses orange, green and ne field dower! in ee contrast against a brown 
which reacts sumptuously on all the other colors. — 4 
Monticelli was a forerunner of van ies who was in fact nf 


ad been ealogellt in ey AS 
On canvas 


Height 26 inches, width 19 inches 
Signed at the right: A. Monticelli 


40 


JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT 


Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born July 18, 1796, in Paris, Rue du Bac, where his 
mother conducted a modiste’s atelier of which his father was the accountant. In 1807 he 
was sent to Rouen to study at the High School and there he received his first encourage- 
ment from a M. Sennegun to study nature, which advice became the determining 
factor of his life. 

Returning to Paris after having passed his examinations, he expressed to his father the 
desire to become a painter, but was refused permission. However, after he had worked 
several years in business, in 1822 his father finally consented to his demand to study art. 

Corot received his first lesson from Victor Bertin, but his real teacher was nature, to 
~ which he turned with increasing love and affection during frequent visits to the country. 

In 1825 he departed for Italy and returned in 1828 to Paris after an excursion through 
the Sabine Hills. The next year he went to Normandy, and returned for a short visit to 
Paris until the revolution of 1830 induced him to travel extensively through France. A 
second trip to Italy followed in 1833, and he visited Florence, Milan and Venice, where 
he revived his love for the Italian landscape. He soon took the road back to Paris, 
exhibiting at the Exhibitions of 1835, attracting the attention of the public for the first 
time by his pictures, ““Agar’’ and “View of Riva.” 

From 1840 success began to attend his career, especially after the state bought ‘‘Le 
- Petit Berger’ for the Museum of Metz. In 1844 “‘L’Incendie de Sodome”’ was accepted by 
the Salon together with his ‘Concert Idyllique.”” With this type of picture Corot began 
a series of poetic works based on literary conceptions which were the foundation of his 
later style. 

In 1849 he received an order to make a large composition, ‘“The Baptism of Christ,” for 
the Church of St. Nicholas de Cherdonnet. In 1853 his large composition “St. Sebastian” 
was completed after several years of work, and in the same year he held a public auction 
of thirty-eight of his canvases which successfully established his popularity. 

At the Exposition Universelle of 1855, his ‘Souvenir de Marcousis prés de Monthérey”’ 
attracted the attention of Napoleon 111, who acquired it for his private collection. 

1861 saw the completion of “Orpheus” (from Gluck’s opera) at the Salon and also the 
“Dance of the Nymphs’ which entered the Luxembourg. Gradually his production 
increased until his works became more numerous than those of any other painter of 
modern times. 

He died in Paris, February 22, 1875. 


Corot’s powers were already evident in his youth; indeed no paintings of his later 
period can equal those painted in Italy, or those realized shortly after his return to 
Paris. Italy’s luminous hills and plains, stretching out in vast and simple masses, broken 
here and there by vertical pines or through masses of buildings, took such hold on his 


43 


imagination that he forgot, in the intuitive comprehension of an inner order in nature, 
all methods of the past and revealed the powers of his mind and eye. To see and use “‘la 
couleur vraie,” as he used to say, that is, the color of his mind, instead of a color system 
like that of the Classicists, became the conscious program of his activity. After his return 
from Italy, his interest in the human figure, which had previously shown a strong and 
healthy growth in his first drawings, was further developed. There is not only something 
of Goya’s strength and Delacroix’s incisive physiognomic capacity in his early figure 
pictures, of which the portrait of Abel Osmond is a fine example, but also a sobriety and 
strength which remind us vividly of his French ancestors during the Renaissance: the 
Clouets and Corneille de Lyon. In his figure pictures Corot achieved his greatest triumph, 
and when twenty years after his death most of his important human documents were 
exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, the public which had been admiring him mostly as an 
artist of great decorative and poetic merit, received an unexpected revelation of his 
importance as a portrait and figure painter. Some of his portraits have a force and 
amplitude characteristic of the Venetians, combined with a tenderness of color and 
expression which is entirely French; others have a sharp and keen insight into human 
nature, expressing skilfully and with a touch of caricature, the egotistic and humorous 
trend of the French bourgeoisie, from which he descended and with whose qualities and 
defects he was intimately acquainted. 

Was it the initial lack of success, or the unfavorable attitude of critics, which bent 
Corot’s splendid will power after twenty years of struggle and made him accede to a 
compromise? His biographers, in their attempt to extol his greatness, have omitted to 
explain the complete change of his style. This change became manifest about 1845 when 
the study of life and nature began to recede into the background. 

His love for music brought him frequently to concerts about this time, as well as to 
the opera or the Comédie Francaise, where he filled his mind with the music of Gluck, 
with literature and the artificial atmosphere of stage art. Through musical and literary 
influences his art began to take an entirely different aspect; his keen observation was 
gradually replaced by decorative arrangements derived from operas and plays, and his 
vitality instead of increasing until the end, as happens in most cases where a spontaneous 
talent is developed from childhood, subsided and disappeared completely in the last 
years of his life. 


44 


Reproduced on following pages: 
PORTRAIT OF M. ABEL OSMOND 
LANDSCAPE 


ae 


Portrait of M. Abel Osmond Jy Corot 


During his first visit to Italy, Corot was in continuous correspondence with his friend, 
Abel Osmond, giving him a detailed account of his travels through Italy, as well as of 
his progress in painting. 7 

After his return to Paris he put the command of his eye and métier, which he had 
acquired in his southern sojourn, to good advantage by making a series of portraits, 
depicting with keen psychological incisiveness the mentality of his family and friends. The 
first of these portraits was that of Abel Osmond, showing him seated on a chair, turning 
to the right, facing the spectator at a three-quarter angle. The sharply cut face, with thin 
lips and half-closed humorous eyes, underlined by a sarcastic smile at the corner of the 
mouth, is typical of the French middle class, which by that time had begun to play an 
increasingly important rdle in politics and in the social life of France. 

The feeling of self-importance gained from the ascendancy of this class has been 
eloquently described by Balzac, immortalized by Daumier’s humor, and found again in 
Courbet and Corot two witty and subtle interpreters. The attitude of Abel Osmond, 
with arms crossed over his chest, speaks of the significance which the new class had 
lately gained. Yet there is at the same time a touch of mockery in the twinkle of his eye, 
revealing the old Rabelaisian spirit of self-criticism, which has been the healthy counter- 
balance of the French, who incline naturally to vanity but possess at the same time a 
robust sense of realities. 

The portrait is painted in brown tones of varying luminosity, lightened to brilliance in 
the face and cravat. Additions of black in the coat enrich and strengthen the body’s 
structure without perceptible emphasis. Remarkable is the ease with which the struc- 
tural facts are set down, two simple ellipses poised in a rectangle. 


On canvas 
Height 21 inches, width 17% inches 
Signed at the left: C. Corot, 1829 


FORMER COLLECTION 


D. Kelekian, Paris 


PUBLISHED 


Burlington Magazine, 1920, p.309, Essay by Roger Fry 


46 


” 


Landscape by Corot 


On the near bank of a river, a few trees are delicately silhouetted against the sky. 
Beyond, a chain of hills runs parallel with the green foreground, where an old woman 
and a child are gathering sticks. Among the trees to the left, half concealed, stands a hut. 

Painted in Corot’s later manner, with swift, playful touches and perfectly balanced in 
the distribution of forms and colors. Characteristic is the use of light touches of red 
in the old woman’s skirt — enhancing the green of the foreground, and in the roof of 
the hut —as well as the black of the tree trunks and the distant mountains. 


On canvas 


Height 11 inches, width 16% inches 
Signed at lower right: Corot 


4D 


GUSTAVE COURBET 


Gustave Courbet was born at Ornans (Doubs), June 10, 1819, the son of a landowner. In 
1831 he was sent to the little seminary of Ornans, but preferring drawing and painting to 
the ordinary curriculum, he soon left. 

In 1837 his father sent him to Besangon to study philosophy, but he deserted school 
again after a year to enter a drawing school conducted by Flaganlat, a follower of David. 

In 1840 he went to Paris to begin in earnest his career as an artist. In the company of 
Bonvin, he frequently visited the Louvre, copied Rembrandt, Frans Hals, van Dyck and 
Velasquez, and like many artists of his time he learned to draw from the model at the 
Atelier Suisse. The effect of such training was obvious, and Courbet’s early works suffer 
from anecdotic softness so characteristic of the academic school. By 1845 the defects of 
his early Parisian influences began to disappear and he plunged with fervor into the 
search for absolute reality which led him to that mastery for which he subsequently 
became known. 

At the Salon of 1849 he exhibited seven pictures, of which “L’Homme a la Ceinture de 
Cuir” (Louvre) is the best known. In 1850 he completed one of his greatest works, today 
in the Louvre, the ‘“‘Enterrement 4 Ornans,” which provoked a storm of protest in the 
art world on account of the truthfulness of Courbet’s characterizations. In 1853 followed 
“Les Demoiselles de Village,’ “Les Lutteurs,’’ “Les Baigneuses,’’ “Les Fileuses,’’ and 
portraits of Proudhon, Baudelaire and Brujas. In 1853-1854, ‘““La Rencontre’; in 1855 
“L'Atelier’’—his second capital work (Louvre). This work and the ‘“Enterrement’’ being 
refused by the jury of the Exposition Universelle, Courbet opened a retrospective exhi- 
bition of all his paintings in a specially constructed pavilion in the Avenue Montaigne 
which has become known as one of the great events of the Second Empire. 

A series of hunting scenes followed during the same year. The first pictures of this series 
were called “La Curée” and ‘‘La Biche Forcée,” to be followed in 1862 by ““Le Retour de 
la Conférence,” ““La Femme a la Source,’ ‘“Vénus et Psyché,” “La Belle Irlandaise,”’ 
Seascapes at Trouville, ‘La Femme au Perroquet,” “Self Portrait in Profile” (Brujas Col- 
lection). A second retrospective exhibition of his own work was organized by him in 
1867 in a building of his own construction. 

Early in 1870, just before the Franco-Prussian war broke out, he refused to accept 
the Legion of Honor offered to him by the government of Napoleon 1, and on Sep- 
tember 6 of the same year, after the fall of Sedan, Courbet as the presiding officer of 
the Commission for the Preservation of Museums, proposed to demolish the Colonne 
Vendéme, the monument of Napoleon 1, in order to eliminate all expressions in favor of 
wart and dynastic ideas. The project was not accepted. Six months later, on April 12, 
1871, the Commune, then in control of Paris, took up the same project and in its delibera- 
tions decided definitely to demolish the Colonne Vendéme. On May 16 the monument 
was demolished in the presence of Courbet as spectator. Shortly after, Paris was taken 
by the army of Versailles and Courbet was arrested by the new government. He was 


51 


brought to Versailles for judgment, was condemned to six months in prison and to the 
expenses of the court proceedings. Although he was ill, he was forced to serve his 
sentence. In the solitude of the prison of St. Pelagie, painting was again his solace. He 
executed there a series of flower pictures in a somber tonality, reminding us somewhat of 
the dark splendor of Delacroix. When his illness became worse he was released. 

During 1872 he painted portraits of Coquelin and Pasteur, but on the proposal of 
Meissonier, his paintings were excluded from the Salon, a treatment which was generally 
condemned. To recuperate from his illness Courbet went to Ornans, where he stayed 
peacefully for a year until May 30, 1873, when the National Assembly decided to rebuild 
the Colonne Venddéme, making Courbet financially responsible for its reconstruction. 
The government seized all his property in Paris and Ornans, and in order to escape fur- 
ther persecution, Courbet left for Switzerland on July 22, 1873, settling down at Vevey, 
where he worked until his death on November 28, 1873, with the same energy and 
fecundity as formerly. 


Courbet’s first pictures suffered from the confusion which the training in the academic 
methods must necessarily produce on an unaffected mind, although in his early portraits 
the independence of his personality had already asserted itself. Landscape painting was 
especially instrumental in forming his style. The figures, which in his earlier pictures 
stood out from the background, fuse gradually in the vastness of his conception of space 
as an atmospheric unit. Manet and Claude Monet took this point of view from Courbet, 
completing his method by going from the studio to the open workshop of nature. 

Courbet lived with enthusiasm through all the transformations which nature—the 
ever-changing Proteus—is constantly undergoing. He paints the sea calm, tempestuous, 
light as a dancer, playful in the sunshine, depressed and tragic when storms arise. The sea 
becomes in this way a God-like personality, acting like Neptune in the mythology of the 
Ancients. 

This concept extended itself gradually to all forms of nature, and a new type of panthe- 
ism was reborn in modern realism. Trees, mountains, apples, flowers, clouds, animals, 
human beings, were the vigorous actors in the Gargantuan drama of the instincts. 

A large number of hunting scenes, completed in his later years, show his intimacy with 
all the manifestations of animal life. The changes in the existence of living organisms from 
summer to autumn, autumn to winter, the daring of animals, deer, dogs and horses, their 
joys and fears, the cold-blooded ferocity of the deer in its love battles, the passion for 
speed in a full-blooded horse; nothing in the characteristics of human beings and animals 
escaped his joyous grasp and understanding. His fight for realism as a pictorial problem 
was gtadually forgotten in the joy of recreating with ever-increasing vigor the realism 
of life, which he saw pulsating everywhere—in nature, in the ever-returning instinct 
cycles of human beings, of animals, flowers, mountains, the sea, the air, all absorbed 
creatively in nature’s bosom. 


52 


page: 


ing 


Reproduced on follow 
SELF PORTRAIT 


Self Portrait by Courbet 


Seen in profile, looking to the left, the painter appears in full manhood, serene and sensu- 
ous like a Greek hero of antiquity. 

Courbet has given in this self portrait a finer and deeper characterization of himself 
than in any of those he painted in the earlier years. Whereas formerly he represented 
himself more or less theatrically—the child of the Parisian Boh€me—he stands out in this 
later picture a ripe man, conscious of all his power; the poet and interpreter of nature. 


On canvas 
Height 22 inches, width 18!4 inches 
Signed: G. C. 


34: 


JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET 


J. F. Millet, a French painter of peasant life, was born at Gruchy, near Cherbourg, on 
October 14, 1814. His parents were Norman peasants who industriously cultivated a 
small farm. A taste for art developed early in his life, and his first systematic instruction 
was received from Langlois at Cherbourg, where he was sent in 1832. His progress was 
such that he was granted a small pension by the Municipal Council to enable him to pur- 
sue his studies in Paris. Thither he went in 1837 and entered the studio of Delaroche, 
where Diaz and Rousseau were among his fellow pupils. 

His first appearance at the Salon was in 1840, when he exhibited a portrait. In the 
same year he returned to Normandy and for some time earned a living by painting por- 
traits at Cherbourg. While thus engaged he met his first wife, whom he married in 1841. 
He went back to Paris in the next year to renew his struggles, which were multiplied by 
the ill health of his wife, who died after a short married life of three years. Returning 
once more to Normandy, he married again, and his second wife proved a devoted com- 
panion. The newly married people spent some time at Havre, where he earned a scanty 
subsistence by painting portraits, small genre pictures, etc. 

He sought Paris again in December 1845. This was an important period in the develop- 
ment of his art. Still under the influence of the Delaroche studio, he wavered for some 
time between historical and peasant figure painting. The appearance of “The Winnower’’ 
in 1848, and ““The Sower”’ in 1850 showed his true vocation, and thereafter he adhered 
strictly to subjects taken from peasant life. 

In 1849 he moved from Paris to Barbizon, a village in the beautiful Fontainebleau 
country, with which his name became inseparably connected. He settled in a peasant’s 
cottage of three rooms, which he gradually enlarged to meet the requirements of his 
growing family. Here, in the midst of the peasant life so dear to him, he found no lack of 
congenial subjects. His masterpiece, ‘“L’Angélus du Soir” was exhibited at the Salon of 
1859. 

The Franco-German war, 1870-71, scattered the artist community at Barbizon. Early 
in 1872 he exhibited one of his most striking pictures, ‘“The Vinedresser Resting.’’ The 
following year he was commissioned to decorate one of the chapels in the Pantheon. 

In 1874 his strength began to fail. He died at Barbizon on January 20, 1875, living to 
the end the simple peasant life he loved so well. 


Reproduced on following page: 


THE WOODCHOPPER 


ry 


The Woodchopper by Millet 


A forest clearing. In the foreground, turned to the right, a woodchopper, holding a 
curved knife lifted above his shoulder to break with a quick stroke a branch of wood on 
a woodblock. To the left, two bundles of twigs, that stand in sheaves, contrast strongly 
with the figure, flooded in the dim light of the woods. Beyond, the forest spreads out 
full of mystery, daylight filtering here and there through the dense foliage. 

The drawing suggests, in its range from brilliance to richest shadow, those studies 
which Seurat was later to make in the control of light. 


Pencil drawing on paper 
Height 15 inches, width 11% inches 
Signed at the right: J. F. Millet 


An oil sketch by van Gogh, after this drawing, published in Dr. De la Faille’s 
Catalogue Raisonné, No. 670, is in the collection of V.W. van Gogh, Amsterdam. 


58 


ay Ca a ay * 
F y ® 0 v i 
a 
‘af 
, 


EDOUARD MANET 


Edouard Manet was born in January, 1832, in Paris, the son of a magistrate, descended 
from a French family typical of the old bourgeoisie. In such families it has always been 
the custom for the children to follow a liberal career—choosing the employ of the 
government or the field of science, and this, therefore, was the natural course prescribed 
for young Manet’s life. Fate, however, decided differently and he became an artist. Hav- 
ing lived in an atmosphere of comfort and elegance during his boyhood days, Manet 
remained ‘‘a man of the world,” in contrast with most of the artists of his time, who 
adopted the Bohemian attitude so dear to Murger and the romantic writers of the Nine- 
teenth Century. Consequently, in spite of the enmity of the Academy, he received a great 
deal of sympathetic interest from the circles in which he moved, and his struggle for 
recognition can not, therefore, be compared with that of Cézanne or van Gogh, who 
had to bear the brunt of the battle for intellectual freedom, although Manet gave a 
revolutionary turn to modern art which carried it far beyond his own expectations. 

Endowed with a keen sense of observation and a great deal of old-fashioned French 
humor, Manet rapidly saw through the artificialities of the pompous official style and 
discarded centuries-old influences with a promptness which testifies to the independent 
nature of his temperament. He gained this independence during an enforced trip on a 
sailing ship, ‘“La Guadeloupe,” on which he embarked as a boy of sixteen when his father 
refused to consent to his son’s becoming a painter. In spite of his father’s opposition, his 
desire for an artistic career remained with him during his travels, and shortly after his 
return Manet went to study at the atelier of Couture. He soon left his teacher in a quarrel 
on account of his refusal to subscribe to the rules of Couture’s art, and then began the 
memorable metamorphosis of painting which subsequently made him famous. 

One can readily see from his earliest paintings that Manet was a realist by tempera- 
ment, a man who was willing to face people and things as they were, and not as the 
official school wished them to appear. Seeing the substance of his viewpoint confirmed by 
the art of Ribera, Velasquez, Goya, Chardin and Corot, his early work took the same 
tendency. A trip through Italy, Germany and Holland rounded out his review of the past, 
which enabled him to judge all the different methods of composition which the western 
world had used in the last four hundred years. Finding them difficult to reconcile in one 
way or another with the modern tendency to colorism, he applied himself gradually to 
eliminate them from his style by relying in the end on the play of warm and cool tones. 

In his first period, from 1850 to 1863, Manet created several important works; the 
“Child with Cherries,” ‘““Absinth Drinker,” “‘Lola de Valence” and the ““Guittarrero,” 
still strongly influenced by the Spanish school. 

With the “Déjefiner sur l’Herbe,” which appeared in 1863, he broke away for the first 
time from the tradition of the brown palette. The picture was so provoking to the jury 
of the official Salon that admittance was refused, and a campaign of such bitterness 
ensued in the press that Napoleon m1 intervened personally in the scandal. Through his 


61 


intervention, Manet, Whistler, Fantin-Latour, Pissarro, and others, who had all been 
excluded from the Salon, were invited to show their work at the Palais de I Industrie. 
Manet became in this way the center of general interest, and was from then on con- 
sidered by the public the head of the revolting artists, an attribute which never left him 
during his life time. The appearance of the “Olympia,” which is today one of the glories 
of the Louvre, was even more shocking to the art world; in fact, Manet did not dare to 
exhibit it officially before 1865. 

Yet, from then on, a number of eminent writers began to aid his cause, of whom Baude- 
laire was the first; Zola, writing as a reviewer of the Salon of 1866, added his powerful 
voice to that of Baudelaire, and Théodore Duret began, during the next year, his work 
of explaining the Impressionists and especially Manet. In 1867, during the Exposition 
Universelle, in order to overcome all further obstacles, Manet organized a special ex- 
hibition of his work by constructing a pavilion outside of the official exhibition, in 
which he showed all the pictures painted by him until then. The favorable impression 
which the public received was instrumental in silencing all dissenting voices and there- 
after he was definitely established as the leading figure of the modern movement. 

From 1866 the Café Guerbois began to have a decided influence on his work; the com- 
ing and going of people, the rapid changes of color, seen through smoke, stimulated his 
mind to catch swift motion through the fluctuation of atmosphere. External motion and 
texture attracted his eye during this period, and he painted passing effects with rapid 
strokes. During 1867 and 1868 ‘The Execution of Emperor Maximilian” (Boston and 
Mannheim), one of his largest compositions, was completed, to be followed in the next 
year by ‘“The Soap Bubble” and “The Beggar,’ now in this collection, and ““The Balcony” 
which is today in the Luxembourg Museum. 

By this time Manet had overcome all his initial handicaps. His hand had gained in- 
finitely in virtuosity and he realized the illusion of rapidly moving forms with an instan- 
taneous grasp. Especially in his paintings of the sea, to which he returned in his later 
years with increasing interest, these characteristics are noticeable. Effects of extreme mo- 
bility in the water and air, in the speed of boats, are created in a state of exhilaration and 
happiness which testify to the painter’s vitality. During the same period were added to his 
work important canvases of which especially the “Bon Bock” and portraits of Zola and 
Antonin Proust, his biographer, must be mentioned. From 1874 to 1880 his plein-air 
technique gradually gained in lightness and he reached full maturity in the joy of living 
and painting. During the last years of his life three important works, ‘Argenteuil,”’ “Chez 
le Pére Lathuille” and “Les Folies Bergéres,” rounded out a career full of activity and suc- 
cess. He died on April 30, 1883, in Paris. 


Manet'’s influence on the development of French art was pivotal and of prime impor- 
tance. Through the atelier of Couture he was trained in all the tricks of the compositional 
and anatomical system, but he soon saw through the artificiality of their precepts, and 
his agile intellect proceeded to eliminate the methods of the old masters. A period of 


62 


travel helped him to pass in review the art of those painters who were considered the 
greatest artists during the previous centuries. This review resulted in conclusions which 
were destined to fundamentally modify the aspect and psychology of art. He learned, 
namely, that art could be produced in two ways: from the outside inward (absorption) 
which needs color or line composition to achieve order, and from the inside outward 
(projection) which is instinctive order of color and form in itself. The last four centuries 
had used the former method with resultant confusion, its possibilities having reached 
an impasse in Manet’s time. Manet applied himself with all his energy to the task of 
clearing away the obstacles which were standing in the way of liberation. If he did not 
see his way very clearly, he gave, nevertheless, a fresh impulse to modern art which 
accomplished final success half a century later. 

The visual change from external arrangement to internal projection was naturally a 
very difficult one for a man with a realistic training, and Manet saw himself forced to use 
for some time the old methods of linear composition in order to co-ordinate the different 
elements of his work. The ‘‘Déjeiiner sur I’Herbe,”’ for example, was based on the linear 
arrangement of Marc Antonio's engraving derived from Raphael's painting. A compo- 
sition by Bernardino Campi served for the “Entombment of Christ,’’ (Metropolitan Mu- 
seum) and in the “Execution of Emperor Maximilian,” (Boston and Mannheim) Manet 
used the composition of Goya's ‘Episode of May 3, 1808.” 

One must understand the lack of aesthetic thinking prevalent at that time to compre- 
hend the difficulties which confronted Manet, and why he borrowed from the past. 
Although Manet had discovered one of the most important facts of creative vision, he 
did not yet seein which way this discovery would be completely utilized. 

Manet’s mistake was that he proceeded by the direct road of painting from nature, 
without proper mental preparation, and he encountered in this way difficulties which are 
inherent in a purely optical method. He clearly understood the defects of linear compo- 
sition, and searched diligently for other means of fusing his forms. The means to this 
end were furnished directly to him by nature. By carrying his canvas into the open 
(plein-air), the infinite variety of warm and cool colors playing in continuous alternation 
became manifest to him and his palette was cleared of all heavy tones. By using warm 
against cool tones, Manet created a unified texture through which all forms appeared 
bathed in a luminous living radiance. Contour, anatomy, composition, light and shadow 
disappear in the new medium which the Impressionists developed to great perfection. 

Manet’s program approached, therefore, the principal problem intellectually, but cre- 
atively he remained inside the circle of naturalistic optics. 


Reproduced on following pages: 
THE SOAP BUBBLE 

THE BEGGAR 

PORTRAIT OF A LADY 


The Soap Bubble 4y Manet 


A boy of about twelve years stands behind a stone balustrade, holding in his left hand a 
Chinese porcelain bowl, blowing soap bubbles through a straw. His body stands out 
from a brownish-black background. Dressed in a peasant blouse of grayish-brown, 
lightened with blue trimmings, his cool, pinkish-cream flesh tones receive a subduing 
influence from the surrounding atmosphere. 

The boy’s mind is concentrated on the bubble, eyes gazing on the tip of the straw 
where a bubble is ready to explode, drop to earth or fly away. Between the bubble, the 
head and the Chinese bow] the dramatic interest is held balanced. | 

This work is characteristic of Manet’s middle period, showing admirably his keen 
observation and method of establishing with deft brush strokes, in simple outlines, the 
significance of a fleeting gesture and attitude, with what Zola has called that “sweet 
brutality.” 


On canvas, 1868 
Height 39 inches, width 3134 inches 
Signed in the right corner: Manet 


FORMER COLLECTIONS 
Pentremoli, Paris 
Albert Hecht, Paris 


EXHIBITED 


Manet exhibition at the Beaux Arts in 1884, No. 45 


PUBLISHED 
‘““Manet’”’ by Duret (1902) No. 96, p. 265 

“Edouard Manet’’ by Meier-Graefe (1912) reproduced, p. 74 
“Manet” by L. Hourticq, reproduced Plate XVI, p. 84 


The Beggar by Manet 


A sack over his left shoulder, dressed in blue trousers and a peasant blouse, an old beggar 
leans heavily on his stick, bending forward his bearded face, peering with sharp eyes 
from under the brim of his hat. 

The background rises from light gray tones through delicate gradations to deep 
grayish-brown, enveloping the whole figure. In the foreground a broken champagne 
bottle and some remnants of food form a brilliant still life. 

This picture is painted in transparent heavy tones, producing the effect of having been 
painted with clay. 


On canvas 
Height 76 inches, width 491 inches 
Signed at the right: Manet 


FORMER COLLECTIONS 
Ferdinand Cronai, Nantes 
Rothermundt, Dresden 


PUBLISHED 

Catalogue of Manet’s Posthumous Exhibition in 1884 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, 
No. 44. Preface by Zola 

“Manet” by Théodore Duret, No. 95 

“Edouard Manet” by Meier-Grafe (1912) No. 48 


Portrait of a Lady by Manet 


Represented nearly full face against a light blue background, a young lady with an 
elongated face quietly watches the spectator. The high black coiffure and black fur bring 
into strong contrast the flesh tones of delicate pink. The half-open mouth shows a row 
of pearly teeth; and a pair of sensuous eyes observe the spectator with concealed glances 
from beneath lowered lids. 

In his “Olympia’’ Manet introduced his contemporaries to the powerful charms of the 
fair sex, just as his predecessors, Goya and Titian, had described and analyzed with keen 
understanding the women who especially characterized their time. Zola discovered in 
Nana again the world of feminine powers, a world which Manet also loved to master in 
his art. In these portraits he gives us a graphic record of the women of the Second 
Empire, who made this period such a brilliant and short-lived adventure, depicting their 
psychology in a number of important paintings, of which “Olympia,” “Nana” and 
“Chez le Pére Lathuille’”’ are the best known. 

Technically, this portrait is one of Manet’s supreme achievements. A portrait of 
extreme brilliance is achieved with the greatest economy of means. The background is 
set down with a wash of pale blue over a wash of pink, the process being reversed for 
the flesh tones. In both cases the pigment is kept exceedingly fluid. In contrast, the 
coiffure, shoulders and fur are painted with exceeding dryness, the colors appearing as 
though rubbed in. Two tones again suffice, the dark blue only partly concealing the deep 
salmon pink of the under painting. 


On canvas 
Height 2134 inches, width 1834 inches 


PUBLISHED 
“Manet” by E. M. Nelston, Vol. 2, Fig. 351, No. 8, with annotation as having been 


shown in the posthumous exhibition of 1884 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. 


Purchased by John S. Sargent for Thomas L. Manson, from whose collection it was 
obtained. 


68 


a 


CLAUDE OSCAR MONET 


Claude Oscar Monet was born in Paris, November 14, 1840. During his early years his 
family lived for some time at Havre, and there in 1855 he met Boudin, who gave him 
some lessons in painting. He exhibited for the first time in 1856 at Rouen. These circum- 
stances decided his career. He went to Paris in 1862 and entered the atelier of Gleyre. 
Discouraged by the academic training, he left his teacher again the next year. In 1863 he 
discovered Manet’s work and thereafter adopted the plein-air method. Consequently, 
he gradually turned to landscape painting, and after 1866 entirely abandoned the painting 
of figures. In 1867 he exhibited with Manet at the Boulevard des Capucines, and his 
painting, “Impression: Soleil Levant,” stamped the whole group of plein-air painters 
with the title “Impressionists.” ““The Seine,” in this collection, is a brilliant example 
from this period. 

Monet lived at Argenteuil until 1870 and then went to Holland. By this time the influ- 
ence of Hiroshige’s prints began to induce the Impressionists to attempt the realization 
of a more nearly complete space unity. The contact with the Japanese diversified and 
clarified the modern palette. 

In 1871 Monet stayed in England until the end of the war. In 1877 and 1878 he 
was again in Paris, where he painted scenes of the Parc Monceau and of the Gare St. 
Lazare. Periodical returns to Havre and Etretat gave him occasion to study the atmos- 
pheric effects of the sea, and especially the cliffs of Etretat in their changing, scintillating 
beauty stimulated him to create numerous paintings of this subject. 

In 1878 he was at Veteuil; in 1886 at Belle Ile and later at Giverny, where he made 
his permanent home. During the winter of 1888 he painted in Antibes, and a year later 
in Norway. A number of snow landscapes testify to his visit there. 

Monet had reached by this time the mastery of his style through different series of 
impressions, showing the same subject in various moods. By keeping the basic form of 
the subject intact, like a skeleton, on which the changing external effects play in the 
infinite variety of atmospheric motion, he tried to reconcile the rapidity of external 
change with the fundamental law of form. The effort was worthy but could not lead to 
a solution in the manner in which he attempted it. 

During 1890 and 1891, the series of paintings of “Rouen Cathedral” etl the “Poplars” 
demonstrate clearly the working of his theory. Other series followed in later years, of 
which ‘‘A Morning on the Seine,” ‘“The Nymphaeas,” ““The Thames,” “‘Waterloo Bridge’’ 
and ‘Reflections on the Water” are the best known. 

Monet died at Giverny on December 5, 1926. 


As a young artist, Claude Monet mastered in a short time Courbet’s idea of nature and 


space, but, seduced by Manet’s vigorous attack on the problems of atmosphere, he aban- 
doned palette-reminiscences of Corot and Courbet and revised his former notions with a 


71 


decision and rapidity which testify to a clear grasp of Manet’s intentions. The changes of 
light, the radiation of heat, the opening and closing of a landscape like a flower under 
the influence of atmospheric changes, fascinated him to such an extent that in his ardor 
for research he was more and more tempted to paint the same subject in its different as- 
pects and moods. Claude Monet finally succeeded in fixing the fugitive changes of nature 
in all their delicate transitions. He makes us live through the torrid days of summer or 
through the chilly periods of winter. To emphasize the fugitive character of his con- 
ception, he called one of his canvases ‘‘Impression,” a title which describes better than 
any other word the sensory effect of his art. 

The discovery of Hiroshige’s prints and of Japan's art provoked a great deal of interest 
in the Parisian art world at that time. Artists saw for the first time the free use of clear, 
transparent tones, arranged in simple juxtaposition, and enclosed in glowing contours, 
to give a wide and deep illusion to space in all its modifications of light and temperature. 
The method was promptly added to the Impressionistic style and was largely instru- 
mental in helping French artists, through the gradual reduction of forms, to prepare the 
way for unity of all forms without artificial optical means. Claude Monet, Gauguin, 
Cézanne, van Gogh and Lautrec profited by the Japanese in clearing their palette and 
giving a better balance to their color masses. Whistler and Degas, on the other hand, 
learned from them the decorative value of line and arabesque for characterization. Japan, 
therefore, is the bridge between the modern Occident and the Orient, paving the way for 
a new style which will one day be the new form of international artistic language. 

During the Nineties, Claude Monet's conception enters a new phase. He still paints his 
series of the same motifs, but with the growth of his mind he notices that fugitive effects 
cannot be completely fused without the firm basis of form structure. In this way he ap- 
proached the idea of abstract form, but not being able to see that abstraction conflicted 
fundamentally with his method, he was finally forced to make the confession that the 
effort to concentrate his mind in order to realize a well balanced unit, based directly on 
optical effects, left him in a state of utter exhaustion. He began to lose the faculty of 
discerning the difference of values and tones, and face to face with the crisis between see- 
ing and perceiving, which is still confusing most of the artists of today, Claude Monet 
returned to impressionistic painting, which after all was best suited to his temperament. 

In his later years he returned to the representation of atmosphere which covers all 
forms like a veil and submerges them in the sensorial notions of light and temperature. 


72 


Reproduced on following pages: 
res aie THE SEINE 

bem Pare Acari VALLEY AND CLIFF 
Piper ttl veh: THE CONTARINI PALACE 

} WATERLOO BRIDGE 


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The Seine 4y Monet 


The river stretches to the left, bending its course in the center of the picture. 
tance appears the outline of a city bathed in a blue haze. To the left a redd. 
half-concealed in luxuriant foliage, stands out against the sky over whic 
whitish-pink clouds are advancing in parallel masses. The river is dotted witl 
and canoes. A boat house, erected on piles, stands in the right foreground. a 
In spite of the great calm reigning in the landscape, the scintillating » | 
and heat permeates the whole scene with animation. The delight of a : 
day, exhilarating all the senses, was caught by the artist in the agile toucl 
A brilliant early work, from the period of the first Impressionistic 


On canvas 
Height 2234 inches, width 25 inches 
Signed at the left: Claude Monet 


74 


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Valley and Cliff (Giverny) 4y Monet 


To the right, partly covered with brushwood, a farm-house and field extend through the 
foreground where a solitary tree raises its searching branches skyward. In the middle 
ground a hill stretches in a semi-circle from left to right. Bushes and trees on the top 
of the hill stand out sharply against the sky. The air is impregnated with the feeling of 
humidity—the healthy moisture of the coming spring, the soil wet and drenched by the 
water of semi-liquid, melting snow. 


On canvas 


Height 2814 inches, width 3534 inches 
Signed at the left: Claude Monet 83 


a. 


The Contarini_ pie tlie 32, 
The pista eae ld Potato se ere eee 
pink and blue lights, heightened grea: 


and windows, reflects its image in the “ ‘Ce J 
waves of pinks, blues and purples, like the ale 


restless vibration in a world eat dead and ak 


4 { 
4 


On canvas : Past 
Height 2876 inches, width 36% hate te in 
Signed at the left: Claude Monet 1908 


Waterloo Bridge (London) by Monet 


Spanning the river Thames, the Waterloo Bridge seems to be dissolved in the luminous 
atmosphere of a London fog through which the rays of the sun filter in iridescent blues, 
pinks and mauves. It is evening and one has the impression of crowds of human beings 
rushing over the swinging arcades, moving like fleeting ghosts with spectacular in- 
tensity. Half enveloping them, the vast backdrop of the sky through which the outlines 
of a tower and factory chimney are faintly visible. A solitary boat, with two figures in it, 
glides silently under the arches. 


On canvas 
Height 2554 inches, width 395 inches 
Signed at the right: Claude Monet 1904 


PUBLISHED 

Catalogue of the exhibition, 1910, at the Durand-Ruel Galleries, composed of works 
by Claude Monet, C. Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley, No. 12, entitled ‘“La Tamise, London 
(Waterloo Bridge) Effet de Soleil.” 


SI 


7 


CAMILLE PISSARRO 


Camille Pissarro was born July ro, 1830, in Saint-Thomas (Antilles Frangaises), of Jewish 
parents. He received his first training from Savary at Passy (Paris), and returned in 1847 
to Saint-Thomas, where his artistic ability developed itself spontaneously. Conflicts 
with his father regarding his career disturbed the peace of the family until 1852, when 
a Danish painter, Fritz Melbye, took him to Caracas to complete his studies. In 1855 
he returned to Paris and came in contact with Corot. In 1859 he was at Montmorency ; 
in 1863 at Varenne St. Hilaire, and in 1867 at the Hermitage of Pontoise. He exhibited 
at the Salon of 1859 and participated with landscapes at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. 
In 1866 he met Manet, and with him and other artists formed a group congenial in 
their artistic tendencies. In 1866 he married and lived at Louveciennes. 

There the war of 1870 surprised him, and he was driven from his home. Three hundred 
pictures, which he left behind, disappeared during his absence and were permanently 
lost. He went to London, but returned after the war to Pontoise, where he remained un- 
til 1882. Cézanne during this period was for some time at Auvers, and through Pissarro’s 
example, became a plein-air painter. 

After 1879 Pissarro ceased to exhibit at the Salon and became a member of the group 
of artists who were called, in derision, the Impressionists. In 1863 he established himself 
at Eraguy-Bazincourt (Oise) where he painted his most luminous pictures until an 
infection of the eye made working in the open impossible. From then on he devoted 
his work to the study of city life, living in 1896 at Rouen; and later he continued the 
same type of work in the streets and gardens of Paris. His last work represents views of 
Dieppe and Havre. 

He died on November 12, 1903. 


Pissarro started his career as a painter without an education, a fact which had the 
greatest influence on his development. He became, in fact, a plein-air painter while he 
still lived in the Antilles, before the time when Manet had formulated the theory which 
was destined to revolutionize art for the next fifty years. Returning to Paris, Pissarro was 
attracted first by Corot’s and Courbet’s art, and by using their methods of opposition of 
light and dark tones, he gave to his work a subdued tonality, until he learned from 
Manet the use of tones juxtaposed strongly in warm and cool oppositions. With Claude 
Monet he became a member of the Impressionist group, participating in their struggle 
from the beginning to their final triumph. 

The charm of Pissarro’s style lies in the rusticity of his conception. He found interest 
in the most simple types of landscape, refusing to be tempted by the spectacular beauty 
of a splendid view which composes naturally in a linear or coloristic arrangement. He 
sought, on the contrary, familiar views, devoid of surprises, and discovered in them pos- 
sibilities of subtle interest which escape the eye of the superficial spectator. 


83 


without the tee BRS eRe fe Las Pod to ‘hee ha 
‘motifs. Whereas Millet and the school of Fontainebleau infuse 

life of nature and the humble tiller of the soil, Pissarro attacks th 
not as he wishes it to appear. This probity and happy disposition of 
work a charm which revealed, especially to Cézanne, the advantag 
rendering with absolute clarity the intrinsic action of a subject, 


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Poultry Market Jy Pissarro 


In front of several buildings, a row of stalls form the market for the sale of poultry. 
Crowds of country folk are moving about, enjoying the weekly excitement of bargain- 
ing and gossiping. In the left corner, seated on a bench, an old peasant, with arms 
crossed, is watching with pleasure a passing peasant girl, carrying her purchases in a 
basket. Another girl sits on the same bench, holding a chicken in her lap. 

Pissarro mastered with infinite skill in this vivacious work the complex problem of 
moving masses. The impression of a crowd in steady activity, full of gaiety and robust- 
ness, has been caught by the artist naturally and without effort. The scene is woven into 
an atmosphere of subdued tones, reminding us of tapestry effects. 


Gouache and pastel on canvas 


Height 3134 inches, width 2534 inches 
Signed at the right: C. Pissarro, 82 


86 


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Le Boulevard des Italiens (Matin) by Pissarro 


The broad boulevard extends its course from the left to the upper right hand corner, bor- 
dered on both sides with trees. The background is closed by tall buildings, standing like 
motionless figures in contemplation of the intense activity reigning in the streets. Car- 
riages drawn by horses come and go, passing the bus station where cumbersome vehicles 
with three horses wait to be taken by storm by the surging crowds which have been 
patiently standing in line for their turn. On the sidewalk pedestrians are conversing or 
strolling leisurely, enjoying the early spring sun which tries vainly to dry the muddy 
streets. 

Paris, the vast human “‘bee hive,” has been caught in this work with a lightness of 
touch and understanding which show Pissarro’s keen observation. The city, ever elusive 
and fascinating, was for him the object of tireless curiosity, inviting him to try his hand 
to capture its unceasing vibration and activity. The difficulties of complex forms had no 
obstacles for him; with great spontaneity one pattern fuses with the next in the rich 
texture of a luminous atmosphere. 


On canvas 
Height 2834 inches, width 36% inches 
Signed at the right: C. Pissarro, 1892 


PUBLISHED 
“Impressionisten’’ by Meier-Graefe (1907), p. 166 


89 


ALFRED SISLEY 


Alfred Sisley was born in Paris, on October 30, 1839, of English parents. He studied 
with Gleyre, but in 1862 met Claude Monet, Basille and Renoir, and his friendship with 
them was instrumental in forming his future style. He first exhibited, in 1866 and 1868, 
landscapes in the tonality of Courbet and Corot. Being the son of a well-to-do family, he 
did not consider art as a profession and painted exclusively for his pleasure. However, 
during the war of 1870, his father was ruined, and Sisley found himself forced to use his 
brush to make a living. By this time Claude Monet had adopted Manet’s plein-air method, 
which Sisley also considered congenial to his own temperament. 

Sisley exhibited for the first time with the Impressionists in 1870 and his paintings 
were seen from then on in the exhibitions of this group in the years 1874, 1876 and 
1877. In 1875 he also participated in the public sale of Impressionistic pictures with 
twenty-nine canvases, which brought him about one hundred francs each. Despite this 
disastrous result, he again sold eleven pictures at the public sale of 1877 with similar effect. 

Sisley lived all his life in the suburbs of Paris; before the war at Louveciennes and 
Bougival, and afterward at Voisin and Marly. From 1875 he stayed at Sévres, and settled 
down permanently at Moret in 1879. It was in this happy country that his best pictures 
were painted. His life in France was interrupted by several sojourns in England, in 1874 
and 1897, where the cliffs of Wales became one of his favorite motifs. 

Sisley died at Moret, January 29, 1899. 


Sisley was a painter by temperament, and it is only from this viewpoint that his person- 
ality is interesting. The controversies which were agitating his contemporaries had very 
little effect on his work and he adapted himself with perfect ease to the discoveries of 
Courbet, Manet and Claude Monet without losing his originality. The lyrical, joyous 
trend of his nature was fundamentally more related to the tender Corot and to Jongkind 
than to the robust style of his friends. Unconcerned with stylistic questions, he gave to 
his work an ease and playfulness which became even lighter through the virtuosity 
which he acquired from years of large productivity. Diversity of color variations, in- 
finite tenderness of light effects, clearness and neatness of technique distinguish all of his 
work. Like Claude Monet, he was seduced by the charm of changing hours, by the tran- 
sition from one season to the next, and by the explosion of full sunlight—submerging all 
forms in a bath of radiance. Sisley’s art is an art of the senses —of senses sharpened to 
the point of great delicacy and infinite tenderness. 


Reproduced on following page: 


JUNCTION OF THE LOING AND THE SEINE 


OI 


Junction of the Loing and the Seine Dy Sisley 


The two rivers form a V, their point of convergence being at the extreme left of the 
canvas. Fronting the farther river, in the center of the composition, a group of old 
buildings with brown roofs lean sleepily, one against the other; low hills covered with 
trees and a field rise in the background, while large white clouds of a radiant summer 
day are rolling in large, unbroken masses from left to right across the blue sky. The sun- 
light seems to penetrate every pore of matter, filling it with joy and warm happiness. 
Everything vibrates in the generous contact of heat. Dancing color-spots, masses of 
tender blues and greens contrasted with the reddish brown of the river bank, produce 
an exhilarating effect. 


On canvas 


Height 1954 inches, width 2554 inches 
Signed at the left: Sisley 


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HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGAR DEGAS 


H. G. E. Degas was born in Paris, June 19, 1834, of a French father and a Creole mother 
of French descent, born in New Orleans. 

Unable to study with Ingres, whom he admired more than any other artist, he worked 
in 1855 with one of Ingres’ pupils, Lamotte, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1856 he 
went to Italy, where he analyzed the compositional methods of the Florentines and 
Mantegna, and returned, consequently, to Paris as a painter of anecdote. Copies of 
pictures in the Louvre followed, completing his education in the same direction. 

By 1863, Degas doubted the ultimate validity of Ingres’ formula and began to divest 
himself of his influence in 1866, turning from the Ingres tendency to realism, which was 
then victoriously eliminating the Classicists from the artistic arena. In the same year 
appeared Degas’ first racing picture, which was followed by a number of similar compo- 
sitions. The Portrait of Jules Finot (Lewisohn Collection) was painted during this period. 
Degas served in the war of 1870, and in 1872 painted his first theatre picture,‘ Les Musi- 
ciens d’Orchestre,’’ (Staedel Institute, Frankfort). 

In 1873, dissatisfied with the political situation in France, he went to New Orleans, 
where he painted the “Office of a Cotton Factory,” which was followed by portraits, 
etc., showing him at his best and in his most fluent vein. After his return to France his 
interest in ballet dancers began to manifest itself. He studied the puppet character of 
dancers, and a group of statuettes of ballet dancers demonstrates clearly that he had 
great facility in expressing himself in this medium. (Shown at the Impressionist 
Exhibition of 1874.) 

To obviate the resistance of oil color with which he had to contend, Degas turned by 
the end of the Seventies to pastel in order to acquire a medium more capable of 
materializing his ideas of vibrating surfaces and texture. In consequence his lines gain 
in elasticity, becoming flexible like arabesques, and his color seems to be filled with 
light and action. In the last decade color again receded before line. The decorative side 
of pictorial arrangement took the upper hand in his compositions, and he returned to 
the sweeping contour of his former years. 

He died in Paris, September 26, 1917. 


Among the constructive personalities of his time, Degas played a réle apart. He did 
not contribute anything new to the evolution, but he enlarged considerably the sphere 
of psychological possibilities; he was the misanthropic spectator of the new world, 
living under the pressure of mechanical progress—observing all its setbacks and defects. 
Like a detective, Degas watched his contemporaries in their intimate actions: when 
they believed themselves unobserved, or when the mask of mutual deception covered 
their faces. 

To perfect his style he adopted in the beginning Géricault’s, Manet’s, Ingres’, 


95 


Courbet’s and Hokusai’s methods of characterization and gained in this way suppleness of 
line and color arrangement, producing on the spectator the effect of absolute spontaneity 
and naturalness. His striving for naturalness brought him, in the Eighties, near to the 
photographer, of whom he was an ardent admirer, and evolving further on this basis 
he achieved a type of painting which had the semblance of photographic snapshots 
through the exactness of surface representation and the apparently unpremeditated 
arrangement of the forms. Fundamentally, the mechanical process was congenial to 
Degas’ temperament, as his descent from the Classicists indicates, and because of this 
trend of mind he was perhaps better fitted to see the course of mechanization than any 
other artist. 

In his horse race pictures his incisive criticism of mechanical training is already visible. 
In fact, he describes with apparent nonchalance the monstrous mechanism of racing, the 
indifferent attitude of riders and horses, and the avid gestures of a public hungry for the 
stimulus of speed, irrespective of whether it is produced by living organism or the 
machine. 

Degas studied, consequently, the hypnotic spell of mechanical training in every phase 
of life, but especially its effect on the stage, and it is here that he gained his greatest 
triumphs. The artificiality of stage life, the evolutions of the ballet dancers, always con- 
scious of their muscles and the effect of their daring acrobatics on a public which wishes 
to be deceived, were an endless source of interest to him. In numerous paintings we pass 
with him through the nervous atmosphere of the dressing room to the morbid situations 
of the alcove, where pleasures and charms are reduced to the level of a mechanical tech- 
nique. In this way, Degas cuts deeply into the manifestations of our time by exposing the 
innermost feelings of a society and period, enveloping his characters and ideas in the 
scintillating colors of exotic flowers or butterflies, brilliant and somewhat brittle, but clear 
and incisive in the command of his medium. 


Reproduced on following pages: 
PORTRAIT OF JULES FINOT 
BALLET SCENE 

LA DANSEUSE 

FEMME COUCHEE 
DANSEUSE DANS SA LOGE 
PORTRAIT OF M. DURANTY 


Portrait of Jules Finot dy Degas 


Seated on a chair, resting slightly against a table, the painter Finot, with delicate fea- 
tures and a poetic expression, looks dreamily at the spectator. In his feminine right hand 
he holds a thin cane, standing out from his dark brown coat and light colored trousers. 

Right next to his head hangs a small portrait by Lucas Cranach, representing the 
Grand Elector Albrecht of Saxony, Luther’s protector and friend. 

Above the small Cranach, part of another picture, with Japanese figures resembling 
Whistler's style, is visible. To the right, on an easel, stands a landscape with figures; two 
canvases are leaning against the wall, and behind the table to the left, a woodlandscape, 
in the style of Courbet, completes the scene. 

The whole arrangement shows the great naturalness of Degas’ method, with which 
he caught all the elements of a scene without pre-arranging or grouping them for effect. 
The colors are solid like those of Ingres, laid on the canvas with great care and technical 
perfection. Degas relied in this work, which is one of the greatest masterpieces of his 
early period, on the perfect balance of his color masses, obtaining in this way the effect 
of such naturalness that one would surmise the subject had been caught by the camera. 


On canvas, 1868 
Height 59% inches, width 4414 inches 
Signed at the right: Degas 


EXHIBITED 
Salon des Impressionistes, 1879 


PUBLISHED 
“Edgar Degas” by Paul Lafond, p. 15 
Catalogue of Degas sale of May, 1918, No. 37 


Ballet Scene by Degas 


In the foreground, forming a low dark wall, the orchestral pit, from which a single in- 
strument, the bass viol, lifts its grotesque silhouette. Beyond, in the dissolving flood of the 
footlights, a ballerina stands at point. The unnatural lighting emphasizes the unnatural 
balance of her pose, robbing the body of its accents and assimilating both body and cos- 
tume to the painted stage on which she dances. At the upper right, beyond the circle of 
light, the dark figure of her partner stands out in dark silhouette. Itis one of the happiest 
and most fluent of Degas’ early ballet scenes. The play of light on the body and on the 
dress of the ballerina is exquisitely rendered. 


On canvas 


Height 10!4 inches, width 814 inches 
Signed at the left: Degas 


IOI 


La Danseuse by Degas 


The supreme moment of a solo dance! The ballerina’s body is bent forward to the furth- 
est extreme of balance, arms outstretched, the back and outstretched left leg forming an 
almost perfect horizontal. The body is lit from below, accentuating the opening of the 
corsage and upper parts of the back-thrown head. Behind is a suggestion of painted 
scenery, with dim figures of dancers at upper left. A bouquet of flowers lies at the dancer's 
feet, their brilliant red heightening the greenish-blue of her ballet skirt. 

The dry oil paint has almost the appearance and quality of pastel. 

Reproduced in Paul Lafond’s‘‘Edgar Degas,’’ p. 133, accompanied by the following son- 
net written by Degas, which the painter submitted for correction to Stéphane Mallarmé: 


DANSEUSE 
I 
Elle danse en mourant, comme autour d’un roseau 
D’une fliite, ot le vent triste de Weber joue. 
Le ruban de ses pas s’entortille et se noue, 
Son corps s’affaise et tombe en un geste d’oiseau. 


II 
Sifflent les violons, fraiche du bleu d’eau 

Silvana vient, et la, curieuse s’ébroue; 

Le Bonheur de revivre et l’amour pur se joue, 

Sur ses yeux, sur ses seins, sur tout l’étre nouveau. 


UI 
Et ses pieds de satin brodent comme |l’aiguille 
Des dessins de plaisir, la capricante fille 
Use mes pauvres yeux a la suivre peinant. 
IV 
Mais d'un signe toujours cesse le beau mystére: 
Elle retire trop les jambes en sautant: 
C'est un saut de grenouille aux mares de Cythére. 


Oil on board 

Height 2314 inches, width 16% inches 
Signed at the left: Degas 

FORMER COLLECTION 


P. Pailin, Paris 


1O2 


Femme Couchée dy Degas 


On a broad, yellow couch sleeps a young girl, half undressed, her clothes thrown at ran- 
dom about the room. She has sunk on the couch from a sitting posture, one foot on the 
floor and one arm stretched out. A greenish-blue background, against which the yellow - 
couch plays in soft harmonies, the purple cover reflected on heavy flesh-tints producing 
the effect of morbid intensity. 


Pastel 
Height 20% inches, width 2634 inches 
Signed at the left: Degas 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Tadamasa Hayashi, New York 


105 


Danseuse dans sa Loge by Degas 


Dressed in the typical “‘tutu’’ of the ballet dancer, with flowers attached to her corsage, 
a young girl stands before a mirror, her arms lifted above her head to fix a few flowers in 
her hair, her right leg turned sharply, accentuating the firm lines of her body. The globe 
of a gas lamp illuminates the room with a hard and pale light. On the floor are strewn 
parts of her costume. Behind her is a blue folding screen. 

This work, one of the most important of Degas’ later period, shows him in full 
possession of pastel technique. Delicate blues, pinks and yellows sparkle with a sinister 
intensity. Knowing so well the tragic ambience of the backstage, Degas characterized 
in this masterpiece the silent drama of artificial, ephemeral beauty. 


Pastel 
Height 3434 inches, width 15 inches 
Signed at the left: Degas 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Madame de Saint Albin, Paris 


106 


Portrait of M. Duranty Jy Degas 


At his table covered with books and papers, sits the writer, M. Duranty, surrounded by 
his library, gazing intently into space. His left hand with two upright fingers supports 
his bearded head, his right arm rests heavily on books on the table. Conceived in delicate 
tones with lightness and decisiveness, the massive head and body of the writer stand 
out in a clearly formed pattern against the background. 

In this work Degas reached his highest achievement of portraiture. He grasped with 
deliberation the character of the sitter, sharply underlining the expression of the face 
and hands. In the coloristic presentation of the room, his mentality and intellectual 
powers are also clearly determined. 

A larger version of the same portrait painted in oil brought from the pen of Huysmans 
the following comment: 

“Degas a prouvé une fois de plus avec Duranty, que rien n’est indifférent dans un por- 
trait: Le geste, l’attitude, le vétement, le décor, tout lui a servi a rendre le caractére du 
modele, qui est la, au milieu des estampes, et des livres, assis devant la table, et ses doigts 
effilés, son oeil acéré et railleur, sa mine fouilleuse et aigué, son pincé de comique anglais, 
son petit rire sec dans le tuyau de sa pipe repassent devant moi ala vue de cette toile ot le 
caracteére de ce curieux analyste est si bien rendu.” 


Pastel on canvas, 1879 
Height 197 inches, width 1434 inches 


Signed at the right: Degas Juoeptred : Dhan Derr 2S mos 18 74 ; 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Manzi, Paris 


EXHIBITED 
At the gallery Manzi Joyant, 1914 


PUBLISHED 


“Edgar Degas’’ by Paul Lafond, p. 15 


A drawing for this work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, NewYork 


109 


* 


EUGENE CARRIERE 


Eugene Carriére was born on January 27, 1849, at Gournay, near Paris. During his youth 
he lived at Strasbourg, and to gain a livelihood he was forced to use his talent for drawing 
by working in the atelier of a lithographer. In the evenings he took drawing lessons at 
the Municipal school at Strasbourg. In 1867 he went to Saint Quentin to find employ- 
ment. There he was greatly impressed by the pastels of Quentin-Latour in the collection 
of the museum, and, full of enthusiasm for the great painter, he decided to become an 
artist; so he went to Paris and struggled against misery for a number of years. In 1870 he 
returned to Strasbourg and became a soldier at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian 
war. The horrors seen by Carriére during this period, and the adversity encountered 
previously, reacted strongly on his work, and he became the “Peintre dela misére,” under 
which title he was known in his later years. He returned to Paris in 1871 with his 
mother and family. 

Thereafter, the influence of Rubens, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Velasquez, Michelangelo and 
the Venetians somewhat reinforced his sense of form, but his color remained anaemic. 
In 1877 he married and went to London, but returned again to France in 1878. After the 
birth of his first child, life became still more complex. From 1880-84 he worked for a 
ceramist. Velasquez’ color attracted him the most at this juncture, as will be observed 
from the paintings of his children, who were, from then on, his principal subjects. 

Already recognized by Roger Marx in 1877, he was generally acclaimed by the critics 
in 1884, but still his work found few buyers because of the pessimistic trend of his mind. 
After 1890, to make a better living, he taught systematically; his influence increased and 
with a group of friends he founded the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts. Portraits of 
Daudet, Verlaine, Ed. de Goncourt and the ‘“Maternité’ (Luxembourg and Lewisohn 
Collection) were the most important works of this, his most fecund period—1892 and 1893. 
In 1904, Rodin and his friends honored him with a banquet which has become an 
important event in the annals of French art. 

He died March 27, 1906. 


The work of Carriére must be considered philosophically rather than aesthetically. 
His color method was borrowed from the old masters, but his views on life were entirely 
original and quite in contrast with the exuberant love of life so characteristic of the 
Impressionists. The war of 1870, years of misery and sickness, turned his mind in a pessi- 
mistic direction. This view reached its highest point when he went to London; the 
crossing of the channel having a determining influence on his mentality. The powerful 
flux of the ocean gave him the idea of a world of relative density, which fluctuates with- 
out rest from one form into another, a view which was amplified and intellectualized by 
the fog of London. Life seemed to him henceforth to be composed of a gaseous, liquid 
matter, palpitating vainly in a tragic ambience. 


ELT 


The circle formed by man, wife and child—the instincts which determine the actic 
masses—attraction and repulsion—eternal separation of individual from individ 
fugitive reactions of the senses speak through his somber palette with tragic 


consequence essentially of the epidermis, spongy and without structural basis, one- 
and enclosed in the rigid circle of his limited personal experience, from which he 


unable to emerge into a vaster concept. 


112 


Reproduced on following page: 
MATERNITY 


Maternity by Carriere uae j stay poe 


Sitting in the foreground of a dimly lighted room, a mother, emaciated 
a sleeping child in her lap, bending at the same time to kiss a second chilc 
reproachful eyes to receive the caresses of the helpless mother. The 
other children glide through the background like ens in the a u 
aquarium. bk. 
The picture is painted in delicate variations of brown fe gray tones. Si 
strokes evoke, in the vibration of the epidermis, desires ang ia 
way out of the circle of a relentless fate. 


On canvas 
Height 37 inches, width 45 inches 


Another version of this subject is in the Luxembourg i 


fgg : 


JEAN LOUIS FORAIN 


J. L. Forain was born at Rheims, France, in 1852, and while he was still a boy his talent 
for drawing became apparent. At the age of fourteen he made drawings in the Louvre, 
where he attracted the attention of an old gentleman, M. Jacquesson de Chevreuse, who 
had been a professor of drawing in Toulouse. After receiving lessons from him, a fortunate 
meeting with Carpeau at the Louvre brought him in contact with this artist, who 
introduced him to the métier of sculpture. His principal apprenticeship, however, was in 
the company of the old masters, who were, above all, physiognomists: Holbein, Goya, 
Rembrandt and Daumier, from whom he learned the animation of line and their methods 
of combining form and color. : 

As a painter he started with André Gill, but his career was soon interrupted by 
military service from 1874 to 1876. Later he came under the spell of Manet, Degas and 
Deboutin, and after exhibiting at the Salon Officiel, he joined the Impressionist group 
in the Exhibition of 1879 at 28 Avenue de l’Opéra, and in 1881 at the Boulevard des 
Capucines. 

In 1879, J. K. Huysmans recognized his talent at the Indépendants. During this time, 
Forain followed Degas’ formulas closely, and like him, passed in review dancers pursued 
by corpulent gentlemen, ladies of the world and demi-monde, catching his subjects in 
moments when they believed themselves unobserved. 

Forain consequently became a caricaturist, contributing to the following papers: La 
Vie Moderne; Le Monde Parisien (1880) ; Le Chat Noir; Le Courrier Frangais; L’Echo de 
Paris; La Revue Illustrée; Le Journal. In 1899 and 1900 he published a paper called “Le 
Fifre,’ which disappeared with the fifteenth number. Contributions to Le Figaro, 
Le Gaulois, Le Journal Amusant, LaVie Parisienne, L’Indiscret, Le Sourire, L’Humoriste, 
L’Assiette au Beurre, completed his reputation as one of the most subtle cartoonists of 
our time. He tackled with his swift pencil all the modern hypocrisies: the greed for 
money, pleasure and power, as well as vice—concealed under the guise of elegance and 
self-importance. 

Asa painter, Forain derived his palette and conception from Degas. The style of Degas 
is apparent in all of Forain’s paintings until 1890. He acquired from Degas the lightness 
of touch, naturalness of arrangement and photographic exactness of surfaces, differing 
only in that his vein flowed more lightly at that time than did Degas’ more disciplin- 
arian concept. 

“Au Buffet,” exhibited in 1884 at the Salon, was especially reminiscent of Degas and of 
the realistic literary world which centered around Zola and the de Goncourts. The 
dressing rooms of the Opera also offered him abundant material to describe with a 
vibrant brush the life of actresses in contact with wealthy patrons. 

In his early youth Goya had stimulated his mind, and with age, the great master of 
human observation began more and more to determine his mentality,—not the youthful 


| 


Goya but the painter of the Capriccios, in which he ees the ferocity of 
nature when aroused by the passion of destruction. . 

In the Palais de Justice of Paris, Forain explored a similar field of human 
demonstrating the perversion of j Levis in the struggle perce ae la 


odds; drug fiends, prostitutes, —¢creating in this way an shoes in whi at 


118 


Reproduced on following page: 


COURT SCENE 


Court Scene by Forain 


Behind the table of the defense, two lawyers are sitting and one is standing. In the 
background, in the box of the accused, five women, and a man wearing a red turban, 
follow the proceedings with varied emotions. 

From the right, a bottle of drugs (the evidence) is handed by a person outside the 
picture to one of the lawyers, who accepts it eagerly; another lawyer bows his head in 
horror. In the box of the accused, a young girl stares with irrepressible desire at the 
bottle, while one of her companions breaks down in a fit of hysteria. 

Forain has depicted in this work the tragedy of morphine, affecting the lawyers as 
well as the accused, morbidly seeking escape from colorless reality into a dream-world 
full of artificial gratifications. 

The composition is built up throughout of strong contrasts which reach their climax 
in the black and white of the lawyers’ robes. On the second plane, red and pale blues play 
more subtly against a slate ground. 


On canvas 


Height 2314 inches, width 28% inches 
Signed at the right: Forain 


I20 


PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR 


Pierre Auguste Renoir was born at Limoges, February 25, 1841. His father, a tailor, left 
his home town four years later to seek better conditions for himself and his family in the 
capital, but luck did not come to him and he remained as before in moderate circum- 
stances. Yet in spite of adversity the parents were able to give their children a good 
education and that inclination to craftsmanship which is so characteristic of the French 
middle classes. When the boy reached adolescence he entered the atelier of a commercial 
painter on porcelain. Here he acquired not only an excellent métier, swiftness of the brush 
and cleanness of execution, but also his first inkling of painting as an art, spending hours 
of leisure in the study of the old masters at the Louvre. 

In consequence, with time, his ambition to become an artist grew stronger and he 
gradually turned to painting, working in factories when it became necessary for him to 
refill his purse. In this way he passed from the studio of the porcelain painter to painting 
awnings in a factory at St. Denis, and by living economically for some time he saved a 
substantial amount of money. With his savings he paid his entrance to the studio of 
Gleyre, where he remained for one year free from all worries, preoccupied with prepara- 
tion for his future career. 

Soon we see him in the company of Monet, Sisley and Basille on a vacation in the forest 
of Fontainebleau — an indication of the direction which his art was taking. But again 
pecuniary worries forced him to return to his former work of porcelain painting. Until 
the year 1865 he had to rely for his living on his ability as a craftsman to overcome the 
financial difficulties of every aspiring painter who is creating a new artistic language for 
himself. 

In the beginning Renoit’s admiration for Delacroix led him to follow the example 
of the great Romanticist. He profited by the fire and ardor of Delacroix’s palette, but, 
unlike others, did not imitate his style. Renoir was a personality of great naturalness 
and the fervent exaggerations of the Romanticists were as strange to him as they were to 
the Realists and the Impressionists. One feelsin his style, at the beginning, the strongest 
affinity to Courbet, who was also a child of the French middle class, but Renoir was 
endowed with a richer sense of color and form. 

Renoit’s first important work, ‘“‘Lise,’’ was exhibited at the Salon of 1868. This work 
shows clearly his tendency to evolve a new art on the basis of Courbet’s style, an art in 
intimate contact with nature, but devoid of that heavy earthiness which characterizes 
Courbet’s palette. Renoir mastered in this capital work the play of light and natural col- 
oring, adding further to his achievement a keen and penetrating study of the personality 
represented. 

Two years later the war of 1870 forced Renoir to interrupt his work until the conclu- 
sion of peace. In 1873 another important work, ‘‘La Loge,” followed his first master- 
piece. By this time Renoir had begun to frequent the café, “La Nouvelle Athénes,’”’ where 


123 


he met, especially, Manet and Claude Monet, who gathered there chiefly to discuss their 
artistic and practical problems. Under their influence Renoir gradually turned to the 
plein-air method. Consequently, his palette gained in lightness and transparency, so that 
when a number of his paintings were shown at the exhibition of 1874, at the Nadar Gallery 
(Boulevard des Capucines), called “La Capucine,’”’ his style was definitely established. 
There he showed the two large works entitled ‘La Loge” and ‘‘La Danseuse.”’ 

This exhibition was generally condemned by the public and the press, and the title 
‘Impressionists,’ derived from one of Monet's landscapes, was applied in derision to the 
group. The persecution which was inaugurated during this exhibition against the “In- 
transigeants,’’ as the young artists were also called, remained for years one of the favorite 
sports of the public and of critics. The immediate effect of the general condemnation 
became manifest during the sale which the Impressionists organized in 1875 at the Hotel 
Drouot: of seventy paintings auctioned off, only a few found buyers. Still, Renoir’s 
development was never affected by adversity and he continued his work with unaltered 
steadiness. The next exhibition of the same groupin which Renoir participated took place 
in 1876 at the Durand-Ruel Gallery, and also was received coldly by the public. 

During the same year Renoir started to assemble material for one of his principal works, 
‘Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette,” which was finally completed in 1883. Simultaneously — 
he elaborated several other important works: ‘‘La Balancoire,”’ ‘‘La Femme au Chat,” 
“Le Déjetiner des Canotiers de Bougival’”’ (Duncan Phillips) and “La Sortie du Conserva- 
toire.”’ Some of these works were in the exhibition of 1877, 4 Rue Le Peletier, which for 
the first time attracted the attention of the social world, despite the ridicule of the critics 
and the general public. In the late Seventies, Renoir became increasingly interested in 
landscape painting, and we see him make excursions to the sunny banks of the Seine 
around Chatou and Bougival, where he passed happy days with his friends, enjoying the 
favorite Parisian sport of rowing, and painting those ravishing views of the river, ever 
changing in the luminous atmosphere of the Ile de France, for which he later became 
famous. Here in 1879 he conceived the “‘Canotiers de Bougival,” the‘‘Canotiers a Chatou, ’ 
and several other paintings of similar subjects. From the same years date many of his 
most brilliant portraits: “Mlle. Samary,” the singer, radiant in her youthful beauty; 
“Portrait of Madame Darras” (Lewisohn Collection) and the large group: “Mme. 
Charpentier and her Children” (now in the Metropolitan Museum). 

The year 1880 was a turning point in Renoir’s career. Abandoning his studio at 
Montmartre and his excursions on the river Seine, he went for the first time to Italy and 
Algeria where he discovered the magic of sunlight immersing all forms in its radiance. 
Soon he returned to Italy, feeling that the root of his life and art resided in the powerful 
architecture and painting of the Renaissance. The Hellenic spirit, which was characterized 
by the triumph of physical beauty over mysticism —revived during the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries — was familiar to an artist who had unconsciously rediscovered the 
classic outlook in his own world. The artists of the Renaissance had also been artisans, 


124 


preoccupied, above all, with the perfect accomplishment of their task, as was Renoir 
himself, who considered craftsmanship the most favorable basis for the development of 
art. These reflections on the art of the past had a decided influence on Renoir’s work after 
his return. He passed through an intellectual crisis which was instrumental in greatly 
modifying his style. In the meantime he had married, and a rapidly growing family 
brought new responsibilities into his life. A severe illness followed and he was forced to 
take refuge in the Midi, where he finally settled at Cagnes, after several tentative visits to 
various places. 

Between 1883 and 1890 Renoir executed several important portraits: ‘““Mme. Clapisson”’ 
and “Mme. Manet,’”’ and a number of baigneuses. In these later works, the contours 
are subordinated to color masses, moving in space in strong co-ordination of tones. 
He also tried to paint in flat tones like the old masters. And he gradually replaced his 
former conception of individual characterization by a more generalized type of woman — 
a new Goddess of Nature, in fact a modern symbol of the classical Venus. 

In 1890 an exhibition of his work took place at the Durand-Ruel Galleries, for which 
Arséne Alexandre wrote the catalogue. From this exhibition dates Renoir’s reputation, 
and when in 1892 he organized a retrospective exhibition of many of his works, all dis- 
senting voices had disappeared. 

About 1894 the first signs of rheumatism began to undermine Renoir’s health, in the 
end almost completely paralyzing him. 

In 1910 Renoir wrote an introduction to a new edition of C. Cennini’s treatise on the 
method of painting, in which Renoir demonstrated that the artists of the Renaissance 
used the same method as the Greeks, who developed a generally accepted technique, 
which gave to artists a uniform style, yet permitted them at the same time to preserve 
the originality of their outlook. 

In 1912 Renoir underwent a severe operation, but despite great pain he continued 
painting views in the Midi; landscapes, lakes, the coast of the Mediterranean; also many 
portraits were annually added to his oeuvre. His last exhibition took place in 1913 under 
the auspices of Bernheim-Jeune. It showed the variety of his stylistic development in all 
its phases, and was especially enlivened by a great many nudes, bathed in rich tonalities. 

During his last years Renoir lived at Cagnes, where he tried his hand at sculpture; 
it was there that he created a large statue called “Venus” and a relief entitled “The 
Judgment of Paris.” The technique of ceramics tempted him for a short time, a fact 
which shows that the interest in porcelains acquired during his younger years had left 
a permanent influence. 

Renoir was almost entirely paralyzed by rheumatism toward the end of his life, but 
despite all handicaps he continued to work until the last—eloquent testimony of his in- 
vincible vitality as an artist and workman who could look back on one of the most fertile 
artistic careers known in history. 

He died at Cagnes, December 17, 1919. 


125 


Soyex d' abord un bon ouvrier; cela ne vous empéchera 

pas d avoir du génie. RENOIR 
Renoir was the direct descendant of eighteenth century philosophy and art. He in- 
herited Rousseau’s conception of nature and carried Fragonard’s and Boucher’s playful 
mentality beyond the artificial restrictions of decorative arrangement to the fullest free- 
dom of expression. “La joie de vivre” permeated his whole life and work more than it 
did the art of any other of the Impressionists. Through a profound understanding of 
nature’s functioning, he reached the wisdom of a thinker grasping the currents of life 
in their elemental freedom of action. 

From the beginning, the gods seem to have favored him, especially by permitting him 
to acquire the métier of a workman. Knowing all the possibilities of his métier, the in- 
numerable varieties of coloration and the necessity of extracting from the material all its 
richness and luminosity, he was for the rest of his life immune from mechanical methods, 
which affected the work of most other artists. Renoir began as an artisan and remained 
such until the end of his life, and his example starts a new direction of ideas proving 
conclusively that art training can be acquired without academic instruction. 

The self-reliance which Renoir gained as a porcelain painter was, in consequence, of 
great importance all his life. Once in contact with the current theories of an academician 
like Gleyre, he promptly saw through their limitations and discarded them at once. 
Endowed with the gift of direct observation and understanding, he proceeded without 
hesitation beyond art formulas to master the play of palpitating organism moving in the 
warmth of breathing space, expressing in his works the joy of earth and flesh expanding 
in the radiation of light and sunshine. Unaffected by the theoretic struggle raging during 
his time, Renoir continued to create with undiminished toil to the last days of his life. 

Considered intellectually, his important contribution to modern art was the rediscoy- 
ery of Greco’s form and color rhythm. Renoir adopted this highly sensitive method, and 
the last remnants of classical line composition were dissolved automatically, giving place 
to the absorbing rhythmical rotation of matter in the fire of central fusion. 

The movement of absorption which started with the Renaissance found in Renoir its 
last and most independent exponent. His art is, therefore, a continuation and further lib- 
eration of the antique spirit which has sharpened the mental outlook of artists and made 
them more alert in the search for new forms of rhythm, vitalized our understanding of 
nature and helped us especially to regain our former creative freedom of expression. 


126 


Reproduced on following pages: 
PORTRAIT OF MADAME DARRAS 
LES CANOTIERS A CHATOU 

LES VENDANGEURS 

THE PIANO EXERCISE 

IN THE MEADOW 


Portrait of Madame Darras 2 Renoir 


- 


es fiery reflections on its delicate folds. aed 


On canvas ne 
Height 3034 inches, width 24% inches. bas 
Signed at the right: A. Renoir ’ Ze an) 


Biker 


Les Canotiers a Chatou dy Renoir 


The bank of the Seine at Chatou. In a boat a young man leans on his oars, his head turned 
in evident inquiry toward a lady and a gentleman standing in the long grass by the 
water's edge. The gentleman, M. Caillebotte, a friend and patron of Renoir, wears a 
_ Closely fitted white jacket and blue trousers, and plays the sportsman with evident relish. 
The lady is more concerned about the fate of her long fur trimmed skirt in the wet grass. 
At the farthest left a man holds the boat’s nose in to the bank. On the other side of the 
river a bargeliesidlein the sun; to thelefta sailboat is turning before the wind, and farther 
to the right two rowers pass like a flash across the surface of the water. In the background 
a group of houses with red roofs are seen against an ominous sky. 

The dominant note in this landscape is a striking coral-red, which, distributed in large 
and small color accents, gives to the scene a feeling of intense heat. Rich and delicate 
blues and greens temper the action of the red, giving the impression of planes moving 
backward and forward. The effect of breathing, of absorption and expansion produced 
in this way gives to the work a perfect illusion of physical action. Seurat perfected 
this method through the further division of light, but without reaching the degree of 
sensuous intensity and richness which in Renoir’s work sometimes approaches the 
fire and breadth of Titian. 


On canvas 

Height 3176 inches, width 39}4 inches 
Signed at the right: A. Renoir, '79 

Purchased from the artist by M. Durand-Ruel 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Mr. A. B. Emmons, 1912, No. 47 in the Emmons Sale, 1920 


131 


* 


Les Micra 4 Renoir 


Down a cule us at Wee ihe vintagers carty bee ae grapes a act 
hills are covered with abundant vegetation, vibrating in the heat of a 
day, accentuated by purple tones in oe to juicy aoe 


On canvas 
Height 21 inches, width 2514 inches 
Signed at the right: Renoir ’79 


132 


The Piano Exercise by Renoir 


Seen in profile,a young girl, wearing a greyish-white dress, is seated before a piano 
trying to decipher her music exercises. A second girl, dressed in strawberry-red, leans 
over the shoulder of her companion to follow her playing, one hand placed on a chair 
and the elbow of her left arm resting on the piano to steady her chin with the back of 
her hand. In the background, a colorful wall paper decorated with flowers and fruit adds 
to the richness of the coloristic effect, which isconstructed with great fluency and mastery. 

Renoir would remind us in this work of Manet’s solidity ifit were not for the difference 
in palette. Red in multiple gradations dominates the scene, speaking with such joyous- 
ness that the energy inherent in each form seems to burst with irresistible urge. 


Pastel 

Height 4534 inches, width 35 inches 
Signed at the left: Renoir 

Painted in 1891 


Purchased from the artist by M. Durand-Ruel 


Renoir painted two other versions of the same subject during the year 1891, one of 
which is in the Luxembourg, and the other in the private collection of M. Durand-Ruel. 


135 


In the Meadow Jy Renoir 


Two young girls, dressed in pink and bluish-white, their backs turned to the spectator, 
are seated at the border of a wood, resting after picking flowers. They gaze into the dis- 
tance of a landscape in spring bloom. In the right corner a little white house is visible. 
Distant hills seem to sleep, bathed in tender sunshine. 

Renoir has applied to this work his method of rotating warm and cool tones (red 
against green or blue, etc.) with the happiest result, expressing therewith all the 
gradations of swelling and absorption which are nature’s most powerful agents. All the 
forms move with a powerful pressure from without, seeming to breathe, pulsating with 
energy, joy, desire and fulfillment. The happiness of circular rotation draws the spectator 
irresistibly into the distance of the landscape. 


On canvas 

Height 32 inches, width 2534 inches 
Signed at the left: Renoir 

Painted about 1894 or 1895 


Purchased from the artist by M. Durand-Ruel 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Mr. A. B. Emmons, 1906, No. 46 in the Emmons Sale, 1920 


ODILON REDON 


Odilon Redon was born on April 20, 1840, at Bordeaux. His father came from a village 
near Livourne, and emigrated to New Orleans during the Napoleonic era. There he 
married a Creole who bore him five children, of whom Odilon was the second. Having 
acquired a fortune in America, his father returned to France, where, shortly afterward, 
Odilon was born. 

The little boy’s delicate constitution made a prolonged sojourn in the country neces- 
sary. This circumstance had a deciding influence in the formation of his mind and 
_ character. The desolation so characteristic of the “Landes” around Bordeaux stamped 
itself on the mind of the little child, never to be forgotten, adding its peculiar charm to his 
sensitive nature. As age advanced, Odilon returned with increasing fascination to the 
family estate, Peyrelebade, to renew there his youthful vision of a world dominated 
by the mysterious powers of fear and solitude. 

At the age of seven he was taken to Paris for a visit of a few ee where he discov- 
ered for the first time, in the museums and galleries of the capital, the glories of the past. 
Because of the state of his health, it was not until his eleventh year that he was sent to 
school to add to his inborn sadness the burden of school books which did not interest 
him. His first communion broke the monotony of this existence with its mysticism; and 
this, with his natural tendency to flee from the world, encouraged him to resign himself 
to dreams and religious images. 

In 1855 he left his studies to turn finally to art. At the same time, through his friend- 
ship with the botanist Armand Clavaud, he was induced to study nature. Watching 
through the microscope the germination of organisms driven incessantly by the pitiful 
desire to propagate, he was appalled by the spectacle of incomprehensible forces, and 
withdrew even farther into his phantasy. The literature of the Orient, and the books of 
Edgar Allan Poe, Flaubertand Baudelaire, also added fuel to this viewpoint. TheGreeks, the 
Middle A ges and Delacroix were, during the same period, formative influences on his style. 

Shortly afterward he made the acquaintance of an etcher named Bredin, who lived in 
Bordeaux near a cemetery. Redon used to cross this cemetery when visiting him, and the 
images of ghosts so well known in his later art arose from this circumstance. After several 
visits to Paris, he finally established himself there, living in Montparnasse, meeting Corot, 
Chintreuil and Courbet, whose works he analyzed and copied, as well as works of the 
old masters in the Louvre. Slowly and continuously his artistic formula was developed, 
and in 1867 he appeared for the first time at the ‘Salon Officiel” with an engraving 
entitled ‘‘Paysage.”’ 

In 1870 Redon was conscripted. He participated in the battles around Tours, but soon 
was retired from the front due to his frail health. In 1879 he turned to lithography and 
published his first album, “Dans le Réve.”’ In the same year he married Camille Falte, who 
brought to his life order, logic and a clearer understanding of his own personality. In 


139 


1894 a retrospective exhibition of all his work at Durand-Ruel’s made him better known. 
Whereas since 1879 he had been interested principally in lithography, from 1900 he 
turned to painting. In 1904 the Luxembourg acquired his painting “Les Yeux Clos.” 

By 1913 a rejuvenation took place in his work. Redon had gained in the last years, 
through the enlargement of his market, a steady demand for his works, and the struggle 
of former years had given way to comfort. The interest of numerous friends and the 
understanding of a sympathetic public contributed partly to the optimistic trend of his 
work. His color became more vivid; black and white disappeared completely, to be re- 
placed by oil and pastel, andin thesenew mediums he attained effects of diaphanous charm 
and richness. Especially in his studies of flowers, a happier disposition was apparent— 
scintillating like butterflies, filled with longings and tender desires, they appear the 
symbols of a short lived happiness followed by decay. 

The war of 1914 again revived in Redon the spectres of terror which for a few years 
had left him in peace. He saw his son go to the front, just as he himself had gone in 1870, 
and again lived through all the anxieties of a period of uncertainty and pain. Finally he 
retired to Royan, where he died.on July 6, 1916. 


When J. K. Huysmans wrote, in the Nineties, his famous book entitled “A Rebours,” 
he did not expect that his ideas would be appreciated by more than a few cognoscenti 
whose delicate intellects and sense organs could follow his analysis of aristocratic deca- 
dence, which he depicted in minute shadings through the gradual decay of his hero, Des 
Esseintes, the last representative of an old caste which had played a vigorous part in 
the formation of his country, and gradually died away when the sap of the tree had 
exhausted itself. What remained of the former greatness was the pathetic figure of a 
lonely man who was unable to grasp with his sensitive nervous system a world which was 
rushing with apparent brutality to a rejuvenation of all its forces. He saw the old 
ideals, which made his family and nation great, crumble and disappear, and feeling himself 
separated from the present, he used his sharp intellect—like a sense instrument—to pass in 
review before the final curtain all those highlights of literature and art which had marked 
past periods with the glamor of approaching decay, concealed in apparent perfection. 

As soon as the book was published it became the sensation of the day. Huysmans, like 
a surgeon, had exposed the disease which everybody had sensed but nobody had been 
able to identify with such accuracy. The public greeted Des Esseintes, therefore, like an 
old acquaintance, a familiar figure, which is common not only in Parisian salons but also 
in the whole western world. It is the phenomenon of an old world living parallel to a new 
one, the former hating the latter, the latter feeling itself impeded by the former in its” 
battle for complete independence. 

The symptom has been called Romanticism because of its literary background, and by 
others, ‘“The Malady of the Past.” Through the whole Nineteenth Century it ran like a 
thread, becoming thinner and more fragile with each decade. 


140 


One of the last exponents of this type was Odilon Redon. In the refuge of his intellect 
he reviewed the art, literature, imagery and thought of the past, tasting, like Des Esseintes, 
only those delicate sensations which stimulated his receptive nerves, refusing those which 
he could not assimilate. He enjoyed the richness of texture, calling his touch the sparkle 
of metallic matter, contracting the varied sonorities of the palette into jewel-like effects. 

Redon lived in a world of phantasms, palpitating in the terror of a fate which lurks in 
the sunshine and in the shadow. A mimosa of the human world, he shrank helplessly 
in the apprehension of uncontrollable forces, in the atmosphere of continual fear and 
desire. Unable to reverse the current and master palpitating matter, Redon was bound by 
his nature. His art is an art of the surface and of the past. Exotic flowers of the intellect, 
his paintings have blossomed in the exhausted soil of past beauty and richness. No nos- 
talgia and regret can revive what has reached the limit of its usefulness. 


Reproduced on following pages: 
STILL LIFE 
DREAM SHADOWS 


I4I 


Still Life dy Redon — | mie 


A bouquet of brilliant field flowers, scarlet and heliotrope, pink and lemo 
porcelain vase. Flowers and vase alike float in an atmosphere as rich and perfume 
imprecise, passing from deep pink through shades of eu toa wee Has 

reflected in the next. om 


On canvas 
Height 25 inches, width 19}4 inches 
Signed at lower left: Odilon Redon 


In the private collection of Sam A. Lewisohn — 


142 


Dream Shadows by Redon 


The head and bust of a young girl stand out in sharp profile from the background of 
luminous yellow and orange flowers which seem to arise with longing tension like 
musical color-chords from the resonant blue of darkness. With apprehension and fear 
her gaze is fixed upon the ghost-like shadow of a man dimly discernible through the 
flowering mist. 

Redon painted here one of his most characteristic phantasies, similar to those of his 
contemporaries in literature and music — Maeterlinck and Debussy. Believing, like them, 
in a mystical existence, he transforms desires and fears into hallucinations — magic 
spectres of reality and dream. 


Pastel 
Height 19! inches, width 25 inches 
Signed at the left: Odilon Redon 


In the private collection of Sam A. Lewisohn 


145 


+. 


VINCENT VAN GOGH 


Vincent van Gogh was born at Zandert (Province of Brabant), March 30, 1853, the son 
of a clergyman. After receiving an elementary education he was employed when sixteen 
years of age by an art dealer, following the profession of three of his uncles. One of them 
was at that time the head of the firm of Goupil in the Hague, and Vincent started an 
apprenticeship there under his guidance. He remained four years at the Hague, and 
then went to London by way of Paris to serve his firm. There he made his first drawing, 
representing the boarding house room in which he lived. 

Since he had spent his childhood in a religious milieu strongly imbued with Puritan- 
ism, his sensuous nature was from the beginning exposed to violent conflicts. His first 
disappointment in love threw him, therefore, from dreams of human happiness into a 
state of melancholia, and turning back to religion for relief, he tried to emulate the life of 
Christ. | 

In 1875 he was sent by his firm to Paris, where he saw the work of Millet, Corot and 
Delacroix; he also visited the Louvre. In the meantime he neglected his profession and 
was discharged. In the beginning of 1876 he accepted a position as a language teacher in 
England, and shortly afterward became assistant preacher in the Methodist Church of 
Isleworth. Until then his preferences among painters had been Jules Breton and Millet, 
but his critical faculties slowly began to develop. 

In 1877 he decided to become a priest so that he might satisfy an urge to religious 
purification, but the conflict between theology and faith seemed to him impeded by 
insurmountable obstacles. A correspondence with his brother about religion, nature, 
Rembrandt, color and tone, sharpened his intellectual faculties, and in consequence, Theo 
advised him to try his hand at drawing. Shortly afterward Vincent sent him a drawing 
made during a walk in the country. 

Realizing the hopeless task of the long preparation to become a priest, he decided to 
speak as a layman to miners, and reading in a small geographical publication about a 
mine at Borinage in Belgium, he decided to go there to teach the gospel. For the first 
time in his life he found a milieu sympathetic to his hungry soul. He taught the Bible, 
visited the sick and familiarized himself with the life of the miners, but his conception of 
life was too simple and not in conformity with the views of the religious authorities in 
Brussels, and he was discharged. In 1880 he went to Etten (Holland) to visit his father, | 
but instead of a reconciliation with his family a complete break took place and he 
returned to Borinage. From then on art began to hold a stronger interest for him and he 
started to study drawing systematically and with infinite care, at the same time copying 
Millet, Jules Breton, and others. 

In the spring of 1881 he went again to Etten to visit his family, and fell in love with a 
widowed cousin who was visiting his parents. She refused his proposals of marriage, but 
the hope of winning her in spite of this obstacle drove him to Amsterdam, where he was 


147 


definitely rejected by her family. Just then he met Mauve, who presented him with a box 
of colors and thereafter his mind found a new release in art.On Mauve’s advice he painted 
his first picture in oil and settled in the Hague. 

In 1885 his first important picture was completed, the ‘‘Aardappeleters.’’ Later in the 
year a trip to Amsterdam opened his eyes to the art of Rembrandt and Hals, and in the 
same year he went to Antwerp, where he began to work with increased fury, and later 
joined his brother Theo in Paris. Soon he met Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Gauguin, Seurat, 
Signac, and for the first time saw the work of the Impressionists. His color was clarified 
in consequence, and his mind was rapidly transformed by discussion and collaboration 
with these artists. He joined the neo-impressionists, and tried his hand at pointillism. 

In 1888 he went to Arles, where in ten days a number of pictures were created, as 
brilliant as Hokusai’s prints, which he greatly admired. Thereafter his style became 
increasingly broad and structural, his palette consisting exclusively of clear, brilliant 
colors, which he used in strong complementaries, as in his masterpiece, ““L’Arlésienne,” 
(Lewisohn Collection). 

By the end of the year Gauguin arrived at Arles, and long discussions about art fol- 
lowed. Gauguin painted Vincent van Gogh’s portrait. About Christmas the first sign of 
van Gogh’s insanity began to appear, and Gauguin decided to leave. Urged by van Gogh 
to remain, he stayed, but two days later van Gogh became insane and he cut off his own 
ears with a razor and was removed to a hospital. At the beginning of 1889 he left the 
hospital, but after several attacks he was interned in the insane asylum at St. Rémy. 

Beginning with this period the interest of the critics and the public, in van Gogh’s 
work, became noticeable. Some of his paintings were exhibited by OctaveMans in Brussels, 
and in Paris by the Pére Tanguy, the friend ofall the young artists of those days. Vincent 
continued to paint in his retreat, especially portraits like old stone figures, solid and 
broad. He copied also all kinds of reproductions sent by Theo, but his copies became in- 
tense dramatizations—sometimes exceeding in power and forcefulness the conception of 
the original. In this way he passed in creative review many of Millet’s most popular works, 
“The Angelus,” ‘“The Sower,”’ etc., also works of Rembrandt, Delacroix and Daumier. 

One of his pictures was sold in the exhibition of the ‘“Vingt,” and for the first time an 
atticle about van Gogh appeared, in the Mercure de France, written by Aurier. Eventu- 
ally the report of van Gogh’s unfortunate condition came to the ears of Dr. Gachet, who 
was a great friend of Cézanne and many other modern artists. Dr. Gachet made an offer 
to the authorities of the insane asylum to take charge of van Gogh, and the artist left 
St. Rémy in May 1890 for Auvers-sur-Oise, where he continued to paint landscapes 
and flowers, until one day a new attack of insanity seized him and he mortally wounded 
himself with a pistol. He died two days later, July 29, 1890. 


148 


La souffrance vous aiguise le génie. Il n'en faut pas trop 

cependant, sinon elle vous tue. PAUL GAUGUIN 
Van Gogh cannot deny his descent from the Dutch painters. The beginnings of his art are 
fundamentally of the same realistic tradition as is that of Rembrandt. Like the latter, van 
Gogh’s first works, painted in his homeland, bear the imprint of his sympathy with the 
humble people of the soil. 

Endowed with a strong sensuous nature, he tried during his whole life to rise to a 
higher plane of human experience, and struggled with himself to steady his art in the 
sway of conflicting emotions. In this attempt he humanized life and men, lifting them 
into a sphere of helplessness, where they often appear touching and sympathetic. 

Paris turned his mind in a new direction. He suddenly found himself in a workshop of 
feverish activity, where the modern artists were working to liberate themselves from 
restrictions of any kind. Monticelli was then painting his most fiery landscapes; Manet was 
already in his most exuberant vein, and the problems of life and nature, light, space and 
pictorial organization were driving Gauguin and Seurat to new discoveries. Van Gogh 
plunged with all his force into this new movement, seeking to master palpitating matter 
by concentrating and compressing his form in a sharp contour and by applying the meth- 
ods which had been formerly used bythe stained glass painters of the Thirteenth Century. 
Yet his restless nature did not reach the clear objective outlook which is necessary to 
gain complete control over the phenomena of nature and to fuse them in sharply defined 
forms; the secret of ultimate unity escaped him. 

Van Gogh remained fundamentally the same personality, following the trend of 
thought which Courbet and the Impressionists had clearly outlined before him. The 
only difference between them and van Gogh was that they were not disturbed by any 
conflicts, while the latter’s senses were strained to the breaking point in his search for a 
higher plane of thought and emotion. When he finally found himself face to face with 
the light of the “Midi,” the all-pervading glorious and terrifying light of the southern 
sun, sitting in judgment in all its majesty in the sky, creating and destroying with blind 
force, van Gogh was carried away by the ardor and passion of nature, just as the North- 
ern Crusaders were mastered by the sensuous civilization of the Orient, and inaugurated 
through the rediscovery of nature the birth of the modern world. 

Life appeared to van Gogh a vast love struggle, a struggle of desires mixed with joy, 
fear, terror and victorious pride. Flowers, men and beasts revealed to him their most 
secret thoughts and feelings; woman in blinding nudity leaves him breathless before the 
irresistible cry of desire; a relentless sun drives nature to uninterrupted fermentation, and 
he threw himself with the weight of an elemental force into the struggle of overpower- 
ing unconquerable chaos. 

In the end his art becamea flame, earth and matter became molten lava; plants, 
flowers, man and animal, flickering flames, licking with irresistible force the sky, rising 
in volcanic motion out of chaos to reach the sun in complete self-annihilation. 


149 


Reprodicta on Thon page: 


L "ARLESIENNE 


L’Arléesienne by van Gogh 


Before a table covered with a green cloth, a middle-aged woman with features like a bird 
of prey is seated, her head crowned with the characteristic coiffure of the women of 
Arles. On the table are two books, one open and the other closed, emphasizing the fact 
that her mind has been wandering away from reading and has lost itself in wider spheres 
of thought, where she seems to find energies of incalculable potentialities. She sits there, 
calmly waiting like the Nemesis of Greek mythology, tragic and intense. Her pale face 
surrounded by blue-black hair stands out with singular intensity from the radiant back- 
ground, which throws the frail body into plastic relief. 

In this work van Gogh has achieved his greatest triumph, not only as a portraitist but 
especially as a psychologist and as a painter. The theory of synthesis is here an accom- 
plished fact. Seenin broad masses of luminous blue, red, green and yellow tones, the forms 
are juxtaposed with almost brutal frankness. Yet the glow of the colors is such that a 
strong and subdued light seems to radiate from the different forms, fusing the contrast- 
ing values into a calm and powerful whole; in fact, in no other work has he accomplished 
such unity of vision and technical perfection. The ‘‘Arlésienne’’ is his masterpiece — the 
work in which he reached the greatest control of his vision. 

The model for the picture was Mme. Ginoux, whose husband was the proprietor of a 
coffee house near the railroad station at Arles. Here van Gogh used to pass his hours of 
leisure, and one can imagine how the artist must have watched the curious personality 
of Mme. Ginoux, so different from the northern women, more oriental and exotic, icy 
cold and full of ardor at the same time. Arles is famous for its women, the population 
being, in fact, a mixture of all kinds of different bloods, Gallic, Latin, Saracen and Greek, 
probably with Saracen blood predominating. 

No doubt on account of her oriental character, van Gogh was reminded of the prints 
of Sharaku, the Japanese portraitist, so keen in his characterizations of actors, obtained 
with simple lines and curves and flat masses of color. Van Gogh followed his example in 
the “Arlésienne.” With the same diabolical incisiveness he seized the character of the 
“Arlésienne’’ as Sharaku did the actors of Japan, setting down on his canvas the person- 
ality of the woman with a fervor and fire which was all his own. 


On canvas 
Height 36 inches, width 29 inches 


FORMER COLLECTIONS > 


‘ Fritz Schon, Grunewald 
Bernt-Groenvold, Berlin 


I5I 


PUBLISHED 
“Van Gogh” by Kurt Glaser, pl. 13 

‘Vincent van Gogh et Son Oeuvre’”’ by Coquiot, pp. 285-289 

“Van Gogh” by Théodore Duret, pl. xxxv, mentioned p. 54 

“Van Gogh” by Meier-Graefe, p. 137 

“Van Gogh” by Kurt Pfister, pl. 41 

“L’Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh” by J. B. De la Faille, pl. 488 

“Van Gogh’s Letters to his Brother” vol. 111, letter 559, p. 236 and letter 573, p.271 
“Kunst und Kunstler,” vol. x, p. 435 and pp. 442-443 

“Kunst und Kunstler,” vol. x1, p. 397, Essay by Robert Walser 

“Der Querschnitt,” vol. vii, p. 474 

The Art News (New York) March 27, 1926 

The Arts, February, 1927 


EXHIBITED 
Sezession, Berlin, 1912 

Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 1914, Catalogue No. 80 and reproduction 
Kunsthalle, Basel, 1924, Catalogue No. 43 and reproduction 
Kunsthaus, Ziirich, 1924, Catalogue No. 41 

Reinhardt Galleries, New York, 1927 


A second version of this subject —the same except that on the table lie a pair of gloves 
and an umbrella—is in the collection of Mr. Friedlander-Fould, Berlin. 


152 


1 


PAUL GAUGUIN 


Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, on June 7, 1848, the son of a Peruvian mother and a 
French father, who was a journalist. When Paul was still a child, his father decided to go 
to Lima, Peru, to found a newspaper, but he died during the journey. In Lima, Paul lived 
with the family of his mother for four years, and then returned to France in 1855 to stay 
at Orléans where in 1859 he entered the seminary school. Six years later in order to see 
the world he became a sailor and started on his adventurous career. While he was in 
India, his mother died, and he returned in 1871 to Paris, to enter the brokerage firm of 
Bertin in the Rue Lafitte. He soon became economically independent, and in 1873 married 
Mette Gad, a young Danish girl. 

Asa result of his friendship with the Impressionists, Pissarro, Guillaumin, Claude Monet 
and Cézanne, whose works he collected, his interest in art was gradually awakened. 
Working during the week at the ‘‘Bourse’’ he amused himself on Sundays with painting 
or trying his hand at sculpture. He was attracted to Pissarro, and acted on the latter’s 
advice to systematically learn the métier of a painter. Finally he became so interested 
that he gradually abandoned business for art. 

In 1880 he exhibited for the first time with the Impressionists—a few landscapes, painted 
somewhat in Pissarro’s style—and participated the next year in the exhibition of the 
“Indépendants.”’ Finally he retired from business and in consequence soon found himself 
without resources. In the hope of finding a larger market for his work, he went to Copen- 
hagen for a short time, but in spite of all his economic difficulties, art took such hold of 
him that in 1885 he left his wife to devote himself entirely to painting. He returned to 
Paris, and left the next year for Brittany, living for some time at Pont-Aven. During the 
same year he met van Gogh, whom he influenced to a great extent, and who in turn had 
a decided influence on Gauguin. 

Affected by the material and moral struggle inherent in modern civilization, he 
was seized by a profound depression, followed by nostalgia for the tropics, which at the 
time when he was a sailor had been a strong stimulus to his phantasy. He departed in 
1887 for Martinique and remained there for one year. That year marked a complete break 
with the past. Ill with tropical fever, he returned in 1888 to Paris, and met the ceramist, 
Chaplet, who introduced him to the mysteries of his craft. In consequence he attempted 
a number of ceramic works. Shortly afterwards, his first exhibition at Boussod and Vala- 
don took place, but it met with little success. He returned to Brittany, surrounded him- 
self with a group of young artists and formulated his theories of pictorial synthesis. Van 
Gogh was then at Arles, and Gauguin joined him there, but returned to Brittany (Pouldu) 
when van Gogh became insane. 

After selling the production of his first year at public auction, Gauguin departed in 
1891 for Tahiti, making his headquarters at Papeete. But the banal life of the Europeans 
at Papeete so utterly disgusted him that he retired to the interior of the island, where he 


 ) 


created a great number of works, including the famous Ia Orana Maria (Lewisohn 
Collection) depicting the life and ideas of the Polynesians. In 1893 he returned to Paris to 
attange a second exhibition with Durand-Ruel, which was not a success either, and for a 
short time he went again to Brittany. A second sale in 1895 at the Hotel Drouot was as: 
disastrous as the first, so he was forced to buy in most of his paintings. Finally he re- 
turned to Tahiti, where he stayed until 1901, moving in that year to Hiva-Hoa (on the 
island of Dominique in the Marquesas) where he died on May 8, 1903. 


En art il n'y a que des revolutionaires ou 

des plagiaires. PAUL GAUGUIN 
Whereas Cézanne started his artistic struggles in the full possession of all his creative 
powers—Gauguin proceeded with difficulty and hesitation in learning the principles of 
art. His earlier work shows littleinnate talent. He tried every method of painting current 
during the Eighties and rejected them all after a searching analysis. Psychologically 
speaking, Gauguin followed a trend of thought which was all-powerful in French litera- 
ture at that time: in Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Rodin, Verlaine, Baudelaire and later in Picasso, 
not to mention Carriére. The idea of the fatality of instinct permeated this whole period 
and it was comprehensible that Gauguin should follow a tendency which was congenial 
to his restless nature. Yet the idea of abstract order, which he called synopsis or symbol- 
ism, haunted him all his life much as it did his friend van Gogh. 

To achieve this object he finally burned all the bridges behind him and devoted his life 
to a solution which, like a Fata Morgana, eluded him in his painting. His art being funda- 
mentally absorbent and multiple he was unable to reach in painting the ideal equilibrium 
which is essential to co-ordinate all individual forms. He compressed individual forms by 
the gradual reduction of modeling into a juxtaposition of single parts, using colors in 
complementaries. In this way a greater sense of order was achieved than the Impression- 
ists had ever been able to suggest. Gauguin proceeded with the dissolution of Impres- 
sionism in opposition to Cézanne, who tried to solidify it. Gauguin understood clearly 
that Impressionism was another method of composition, better than that of the Classic- 
ists, but inherently ineffective to eradicate the element of time. 

The influence of Japanese prints on French art in establishing a larger spacial sense has 
already been noted. The rediscovery of the so-called primitives added new ideas, which 
did not quite lead to their imitation, but which contributed to the intellectual ferment 
agitating the coming generation of painters and sculptors. In the art of the primitives 
was found a unity which was not only dramatically diversified to the smallest detail, but 
which was especially plastic and active in each individual form, obeying the same law of 
simultaneous action. The solution which artists had asked from Nature for half a cen- 
tury had offered no difficulty to the so-called Primitives, and when their methods were 
rediscovered, all the younger artists began to search for this ideal equilibrium of all forms 
without the element of time. Gauguin stated his thesis as follows: 


156 


“L’art primitif procéde de l’esprit et emploie la nature. L’art soi-disant raffiné procéde 
de la sensualité et sert la nature. La nature est la servante du premier et la maitresse du 
second. Mais la servante ne peut oublier son origine, elle avilit l’artiste en se laissant 
adorer par lui. C’est ainsi que nous sommes tombés dans l’abominable erreur du natural- 
isme. Le Naturalisme commence avec les Grecs de Périclés. Depuis il n'y a eu de plus ou 
moins grands attistes que ceux qui ont plus ou moins réagi contre cette erreur; mais leurs 
réactions n'ont été que des sursauts de mémoite, des lueurs de bon sens dans un mouve- 
ment de décadence, au fond ininterrompu depuis des siécles. La vérité, c'est l’art cérébral 
pur, c’est l'art primitif,—le plus savant de tous,—c’est Egypte. La est le principe. Dans 
notre misére actuelle, il n’y a de salut possible que par le retour raisonné et franc au 
principe. Et ce retour, c’est l’action du symbolisme en poésie et en art.” (“Gauguin” 
by Charles Morice, Page 22.) By ““symbolisme,” Gauguin understood the substitution of 
natural objects by their abstracted symbols — the translation of reality into abstraction. 

Armed with such a highly developed mentality, Gauguin went to Tahiti and found 
himself face to face with the spectacle of primitive man and tropical nature, exuberant in 
the life of the instincts, and restrained in the expression of their passions. Here was an 
idea worthy of a thinker and an imaginative artist. The enigma in the eyes of the Tahi- 
tian Eve, subtle in her naiveté, wrestling with the primeval Adam—the delicate grada- 
tions of instincts, attaining the holiness of motherhood and returning again into the 
citcle of passion, was the daily drama before his eyes—a drama which, because it had 
never been witnessed by any other Western artist, tempted him to ever new variations of 

the same theme. Man, the child of Nature; Nature itself, a vast germinating spring day 
which passes before the eye as a splendid banquet of the senses, to be followed by the 
fatality of destruction, was dramatized by Gauguin to a state of divine power—a power 
gifted with inherent wisdom, similar to the conception of Brahma in Hindu philosophy. 

Gauguin’s influence as a thinker, as a man of ideas, was therefore as great as his activi- 
ties as a painter. His ideas as a craftsman and analyst advanced painting a degree nearer 
to final abstraction. As a philosopher he grasped the functional character of all religion, 
an idea which Freud later elaborated fully, and introduced the Western mind to the 
sublime spectacle of a humanity capable of canalizing its instincts in the direction of a 
universal order. 


Reproduced on following pages: 
LANDSCAPE 

IA ORANA MARIA 
MATERNITY 

THE BATHERS 


15] 


Landscape by Gauguin 


In a valley, two farmhouses, covered at red beick: tiles, nestle: among 

and red Lae of the as autumn. A number of apr: rise nie pa 

delicate pinks, purples and blues. 
On canvas 


Height 2834 inches, width 3534 inches 
Signed at the left: P. Gauguin 


PP UR ean 


pie sake 
te Lee 
3 €-o 


Ja Orana Maria by Gauguin 


“Two young Tahitian women with beautiful, grave and naive faces contemplate in prayer 
another woman of slightly more than human height, carrying on her left shoulder a 
child who reposes its head, with a caressing gesture, on its mother’s head. An angel 
richly dressed, calm and humble, watches the scene from behind trees in bloom. 

‘Ta Orana Maria,’ they pray; “We greet you, Mary.’ 

“Et la nature est toute une priére de suavité, de luxuriance, qui refléte le sourire de la 
Vierge, un sourire ol: s'épanouissent ensemble le plaisir et la piété, le majestueux et le 
mutin de la déesse et de la femme, telles que ces Ames naturelles peuvent a travers celle-ci 
concevoir celle-la, telles qu’elles les adoraient jadis toutes deux dans la tendre Hina. 
‘Ta Orana Hina.’”’ (“Gauguin” by Charles Morice, p. 183.) 

With Ia Orana Maria, exhibited at Durand-Ruel’s in 1893, Gauguin for the first time 
fired the popular imagination. The calm beauty of the work, the richness of its color 
pattern, the breadth of its design, made a profound impression. Peace had returned to 
art through the person of a revolutionary. Unaccented, the rich patterns of green, blue, 
red and gold flow into one another with an ease and spontaneity that haveno parallel 
in Western art since the days of the Gothic tapestry weavers. 


On canvas 
Height 4434 inches, width 34% inches 
Signed: P. Gauguin ‘91 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Michel Manzi, Paris 


PUBLISHED 
“Paul Gauguin” by Jean de Rotonchamp, 1925 
A drawing of the Madonna is reproduced in “Gauguin,” by Charles Morice, p. 180 


EXHIBITED 


Durand-Ruel Galleries, 1893, Catalogue by Charles Morice, No. 1 


161 


Maternity by Gauguin 


Against a background of sea, headland and sky, a pattern of dull gold leading through 
purple to gold of a greater brilliance,—three noble figures. At lower right a woman, 
crouching on the ground, gives suck to her child. Above her a man, tall, nude to the 
waist, his long black hair flowing unbound, tears in his two hands a white flower. To his 
left a young girl, with a basket of fruit on her left arm, a single fruit upraised in her left 
hand, turns her superb body with languorous grace toward the spectator. 

The rich patterns of blue and red play happily with the purple and gold of the back- 
ground, heightening the calm beauty of the scene. 


On canvas 
Height 3634 inches, width 2314 inches 
Signed at the right: Paul Gauguin 


FORMER COLLECTIONS 
D. Kelekian, Paris 
Michel Manzi, Paris 


PUBLISHED 


“Gauguin” by Charles Morice, p. 164 
“Paul Gauguin” by Jean de Rotonchamp, 1925 


162 


se 


‘ ee SNe y 
ae I ek 


The Bathers dy Gauguin 


In a tropical forest, dark with luxuriant foliage, the colorful surface of a pool moves in 
strong reflections and undulations. Two Tahitian women, dressed in loin cloths, have 
entered the water, but turn backward with a gesture of fear and hesitation. To their 
right another woman is undressing, seated on the grass with her proud back turned, 
while a fourth woman slowly ascends the rose colored banks of the pool. 

Rich colors alternating with delicate nuances express powerfully the humid heat of 
the tropics, which urges flora, fauna and humanity to eternal reproduction. The perfect 
unity of arabesques flowing one into another, combined with the rich texture of the 
colors, produces the effect of tapestry. 


On canvas 


Height 3614 inches, width 2314 inches 
Signed at the left: P. Gauguin, 98 


165 


HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born at Albi on November 24, 1864, the descendant of an 
old aristocratic family. At the age of thirteen he broke both his legs, and the badly healed 
breaks prevented their normal growth, giving him the appearance of a dwarf. In addi- 
tion to this deformity, he suffered from short-sightedness, and a pair of heavy lips 
disfigured his intelligent face, emphasizing the gnome-like appearance of his body. 

During his boyhood he studied at the Lycée Condorcet, where he met the horse painter, 
Princeteau. As he possessed an inborn love for horses, Lautrec enjoyed the pleasure of 
drawing and painting horses in the company of his teacher. What was in the beginning 
more or less a caprice became in time a passion. He soon left Princeteau, endeavoring 
without success in Bonnat’s and Gorman’s ateliers to learn the rules of art, finally finding 
himself reduced to his own mental resources. Of his contemporaries, Degas impressed 
him most at that time. He also came in contact with Forain as well as Monet; Renoir 
provoked his admiration, but like all other artists of the late Nineteenth Century, he was 
especially attracted by Japanese prints. 

At this time Montmartre became the center of the pleasure seeking world, and Lautrec 
found in the cabarets and cafés ample food for an inborn instinct of curiosity. Like a 
doctor he scrutinizes the human animal when it throws off the social mask in the whirl 
of pleasure; but what distinguishes Lautrec from artists of the same temperament is the 
lack of condemnation in his attitude toward his contemporaries. On the contrary, he 
takes them as they are, adding only a touch of irony, aristocratic sarcasm, or human 
sympathy, to his observations. Seen through Lautrec’s eyes the human procession passes 
like a perpetual carnival—comedy and tragedy commingled in the hands of a clever puppet 
master. 

Le Moulin Rouge and Le Moulin de la Galette, where Jane Avril, Bruant, Valentin le 
Desossé and la Goulue practised their art, became his favorite themes. Celebrities of the 
world of art and letters followed: Yvette Guilbert, Marcelle Lender and Cissie Loftus 
were immortalized by his ironic pencil and brush. Van Gogh sat for him in 1887, and 
about the same time he painted a number of portraits, one of the best of which is that of 
Delaporte. He also made a drawing of Oscar Wilde (1895) which appeared in the Revue 
Blanche. In 1901 he executed one of his most remarkable works: ‘The Operation of Dr. 
Tapie de Celeyran.”’ Another series of paintings representing his friends: Dr. Louis Pascal, 
Dr. Bourges, Desiré Dihan, André Rivoire, the actor Samary, Henry Nocq and Maurice 
Joyant, the publisher of all his drypoints and drawings, completes his activity in this 
direction. 

After 1894 Lautrec used lithography exclusively to express with rapidity his fleeting 
observations of Parisian life, which he studied with ever increasing penetration. The 
cafés, theaters and especially the circus offered him subjects for observation which grad- 
ually broadened and deepened his human understanding and the development of his style. 


167 


In 1892 a bull ring was opened in Paris, attracting Lautrec’s attention. Portraits of all 
the toreadors and picadors followed. About the same time the Cirque Medrano, a source 
of enjoyment for many other artists (Seurat and Picasso) opened its doors, offering a 
rich harvest to Lautrec’s eager eye. In the contact with the supple world of the ring his 
capacity for rapid and incisive characterization gained considerably, his line increased in 
flexibility and his color in vivacity and power. 

In 1896 the political field tempted him and he made a number of lithographs during 
the “‘procés”’ Arton. In the same year appeared the following series: “Yvette Guilbert,” 
“Le Café Concert,” two illustrated books of natural history, and Clémenceau’s book, “Au 
Pied du Sinai,” with illustrations by Lautrec. The painter contributed to newspapers and 
magazines: Le Courrier Frangais, Le Mirliton, L’Escarmouche, Le Rire, Paris Illustré, Le 
Figaro LIlustré. 

Yet Lautrec became especially famous for the posters he made for theaters, cabarets 
and business houses. He introduced to an industry which formerly used only the written 
word, the forms and varied colors of his art, revolutionizing old-fashioned ideas of 
advertising by demonstrating to what degree art could permeate mechanical processes. 
Today, Lautrec’s initiative in this direction is obscured by the commercialized applica- 
tion of his methods. Instead of elevating advertising to a higher plane of artistic achieve- 
ment, his example has been cheapened, and since his day, advertising has not again 
reached the level of Lautrec’s initial effort. 

Lautrec never craved official honor or success. He never participated in any of the 
official exhibitions arranged by the Salon, but became in 1889 a member of the Indé- 
pendants. During 1900 Lautrec stayed for some time at Bordeaux, where he heard the 
opera ‘“Messalina’’ by Isidore de Lara at the Grand Theatre. Attracted by the humorous 
character of the performance, Lautrec painted two scenes, making additional studies of 
the actors and singers, which were the last works he produced. At that time Lautrec’s 
health began to fail. In 1901, while he was at Arcachon, an attack of paralysis hastened 
his end, and he died on September 6, 1901 at Malramé (the estate of his family). 


The rdle of Toulouse-Lautrec in modern French art resembles in many ways that of 
Daumier fifty years earlier. Both were psychologists, interested in the sometimes 
serious, often ridiculous, human actor, vainly attempting to deceive the world and 
incidentally himself. 

Daumier, the plebeian, watched humanity with a generous and indulgent humor, face 
to face with a newworld idea in all the ugliness of transformation; Lautrec, with the de- 
tachment of an aristocratic soul was intent upon the spectacle of apparent destruction 
and collapse. It is through pessimistic eyes that Lautrec passes in review the modern 
actors in the human comedy of pleasure-seeking Paris. All the fashionable personalities of 
his time are shown in their characteristic actions without the mask of deception, depicted 
and analyzed with infallible judgment. The complexities of the modern character are laid 


168 


bare in the procession of celebrities who gave the Paris of the Nineties its character, 
personifications of the tendencies underlying certain modern currents. For this reason 
Lautrec’s work is of great historical importance; he has not only pictured and described 
with pencil and brush the chronicle of pre-war Paris, but has more eloquently expressed 
the Parisian rhythm of those days than any historian of the written word. 

So great was Lautrec’s interest in human life that he never attempted to paint land- 
scapes. Until the end, the country attracted him only as a means of recuperation from the 
exhaustion of city life, and as soon as his energies were restored he returned to Paris to 
plunge again into the whirlpool of the contemporary drama which unrolled itself inter- 
minably before the eyes of this understanding historian and analyst. 

Essentially an aristocrat by nature, a man of clear insight, the shortcomings of the 
modern world were no secrets to him, yet he had no quarrel with contemporary life; he 
judged it at its real value. Mechanical inventiveness, which generous scientists were dis- 
covering for the benefit of humanity, was perverting the gifts of nature, breeding an in- 
creased desire for speed and eventually for destruction. Seen from this angle—destruction 
was after all the beginning and the end of all things. Why not accept this philosophy as 
well as any other? Lautrec lived and passed away in this attitude, giving us in his art a 
graphic demonstration of a conception which is today the motive idea of the many, if 
not of the majority, but which most of us wish to conceal behind the veil of self deception. 


Reproduced on following page: 


THE OPERA ‘‘MESSALINA’’AT BORDEAUX 


169 


The Opera “Messalina” at Bordeaux by Toulouse-Lautrec 


Messalina, dressed in a brilliant red robe, descends the steps of her palace between rows 
of young girls playing harps. In the foreground, Nero, with Roman helmet and armor, 
awaits the Empress. Behind him stands a soldier. 

The pretense of provincial actors playing personalities of the classical age is here de- 
picted by Toulouse-Lautrec with infinite sarcasm and humor. Transposed from the banal- 
ities of modern life, the principal actress is seen making a superhuman effort to play the 
rdle of an Empress. Nero, a big fat tenor, appears cramped in the narrow space of an 
armor which is compressing his waistline. His blurred, swollen face shows the strenuous 
endeavor to act his réle heroically. The members of the chorus look like poor working 
girls, engaged for the occasion, ill at ease in such unaccustomed surroundings and clothes. 

Yet, as always with Toulouse-Lautrec, the instinct of the master creates, despite ironic 
intent, a work of art which surpasses irony. Beyond the inadequacy of the players, the 
stifling pomposity of the tenor, the butler-like rigidity of the soldier, the empty posture 
of Messalina herself, one is conscious, in the spaciousness of the design, of the easy inter- 
play of pattern; but above all, in the unerring use of the three simple tones of which the 
scene is composed, one is conscious of something that may not unfairly be called gran- 
deur. The ironist has cast himself, malgré lui, for a classic réle. 


On canvas 
Height 39 inches, width 2834 inches 


Signed at lower left with Lautrec’s monogram. 


PUBLISHED 
‘“Toulouse-Lautrec’’ by Théodore Duret, p. 120 


170 


PAUL CEZANNE 


Paul Cézanne was born at Aix-en-Provence, January 19, 1839, the son of a hat manu- 
facturer who turned to banking in his later years. In 1853 young Paul entered the High 
School of Aix in the company of Zola, and after finishing the regular school course, he 
followed the study of law from 1860 to 1861, gaining several awards. Finally, disgusted 
with law, he turned to art. 

When still a child he had shown great interest in drawing, and after overcoming his 
father’s reluctance to let him follow his artistic inclinations, he went to Paris in 1862 to 
complete his training. At the Académie Suisse he had his first experience with art as it is 
taught in institutions; but unable to assimilate the academic instruction, he failed in the 
competition for admission to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Discouraged, he returned to Aix 
to enter the bank of his father, but left shortly afterward, feeling himself inevitably 
attracted to art. In 1863 he appeared again in Paris, where he renewed his friendship with 
Zola. At the Académie Suisse he met Pissarro and Guillaumin. The influence of these two 
men was added to the earlier influence of Delacroix, Courbet and Daumier—which first 
determined the style of his art. One of the best known paintings of this period is ““L’En- 
lévement.” Courbet’s influence was especially effective in training him in realism, but the 
pictures painted during this time, in the vein of Courbet, show a powerful grasp of his 
subjects that took Cézanne beyond Courbet’s conception. 

In 1866 Zola brought Cézanne in contact with Manet, who was responsible for 
Cézanne’s turning to plein-air painting. In 1873 he resided at Auvers-sur-Oise, where 
contact with Pissarro’s point of view reacted strongly on his own color system. Yet in 
spite of adapting himself to different color methods, Cézanne never lost his originality. 
He was always the same, a man of strong instincts and keen observation, capable of 
using his artistic language independently, an attribute which began to bear fruits of ever- 
increasing richness. Parallel with his increase in power and forcefulness, his palette 
became more delicate and diaphanous, indeed more like water colors. 

Between 1874 and 1877 Cézanne liberated himself from all former influences. During 
this time the hostility toward his work expressed by the public and the press grew 
to such proportions that Cézanne renounced all public approval and devoted himself 
entirely to his art as a pure vocation. (The only time he was received at the Salon was 
in 1862.) 

In a way similar to that of a Chinese painter, Cézanne studied nature and laid his ob- 
servations on the canvas with delicate brush strokes. Once the theme was set down with 
clarity, the rest of the canvas was left empty. In this way he wrote in numerous paintings 
a record of the Midi, depicting the robust, sunburned rocks and mountains of the Medi- 
terranean in various moods, and presented the people of the Midi in all their sturdiness. 
During the same period he also painted many of his friends, including Vollard and Doctor 
Gachet, and portraits of his wife, who inspired him to his greatest masterpieces. With 


173 


age the lyrical character of his work became more pronounced. During the last years of 
his life, his work became imbued with a delicate tenderness which produced effects 
similar to the atmospheric transparency of the Sung painters. 

In 1879 he returned to Aix, where he resided permanently thereafter. 

In 1886 his father died, leaving him in comfortable circumstances. 

Cézanne died in 1906 at Aix-en-Provence. 

La nature est matitre, T esprit est matrice. 

CHARLES MORICE 

Writing of Cézanne’s beginning as a painter, Théodore Duret described him as a man 

possessed by the demon of art. No other comparison could better characterize his early 

works. Something akin to Delacroix’s ardor and passion drove him during his younger 

years to knit his pictures forcefully together in large vibrant masses. Thick layers of color 

were superimposed with the palette knife, or with the tips of his fingers and with big 

brushes. His penetrating vision is violently extracted from resisting matter, tending with 

irresistible urge, in spite of a chaotic métier, to the fusion of all the different elements into 
a homogeneous tone-organism. 

The problems of craftsmanship and mental discipline baffled him in those days. To 
acquire such a discipline, which he felt was essential, but which he was then unable 
to grasp intellectually in its entirety, was the task of his life. His whole career was a 
continuous struggle to readjust the functioning of his eye to the creative action of his 
temperament. This conflict impressed itself on his work, and the epithet “anarchist,” 
with which the public and critics have tried to deprecate his effort, is largely due to the 
ruggedness of his technique—a result of the continuous struggle with his métier. 

The description of Cézanne as an anarchist never deceived anyone who knew him. Shy 
and retiring by nature, he was interested only in the elaboration of his ideas; unconcerned 
with politics or political theories, he lived a recluse in a small provincial town. Since he 
painted pictures which still today are a mystery to his neighbors, and since he was en- 
dowed with a vision far beyond the mentality of the average man, it is no wonder that 
the epithet “‘anarchist’’ was applied to a personality of such energetic disposition, a 
painter who foresaw the development of painting with a clearer understanding than 
most other artists. 

Besides the influence of Delacroix, we find Daumier’s caustic mentality shaping 
Cézanne’s outlook in his early years, until the friendship of Manet and Pissarro induced 
him to try the plein-air method. From then on his palette was cleared of all heavy tones. 
The example of the Japanese in their economical use of material for the realization of space 
is also effective in Cézanne’s work. 

With the gradual flattening of surfaces, Cézanne’s form-sense became constantly more 
ordered and compact, and his aim to render Impressionism solid became a reality. Yet he 
was never satisfied with the results obtained, feeling that nature refused him that com- 
plete unity and homogeneity to which his mind aspired. Cézanne saw the final solution 


174 


within his reach but was unable to take the last step toward complete mental abstrac- 
tion. Although he was bound by nature, he understood that nature transforms itself in 
the artist’s mind by way of cubes, cylinders, pyramids, etc., and that art in complete 
abstraction uses those simple forms in organic co-ordination. The problem of using this 
concept creatively was not for him. He had learned his limitations through different 
trials, and left it for others to find the solution. Cézanne felt instinctively that it was 
more important to let nature undergo spontaneous transformation in the mysterious al- 
chemy of the mind than to force our faculties into a rigid frame of reasoning, which can 
only kill the impulse at its root. Henri Rousseau brought to the problem its final solution 
without any conscious effort, being aware that perfect creation is the result of a state of 
mind which lies beyond our consciousness and cannot, therefore, be attained through 
conscious effort. 

In his last years, Cézanne achieved a lightness of métier and gentleness of expression 
which his volcanic temperament denied him in the beginning. In the end his mind and 
hand mastered with perfect ease the radiant flow of his generous vision of nature and 
its forces in action. 


Reproduced on following pages: 
PORTRAIT OF A MAN 

L'ESTAQUE 

PORTRAIT OF MADAME CEZANNE 


175 


Portrait of a Man (l’Oncle Dominique) by Cézanne 


A middle-aged man, with stocky frame and round head emerges in strong contrast from 
the luminous blue-grey background. His fleshy face with drooping mustache and bearded 
chin is dominated by two piercing eyes, which seem to search the spectator with un- 
canny penetration. Stubbornness and power underline every form and curve of his physi- 
ognomy, modulated here and there with the delicate vibrations of a robust humor, so 
characteristic of the French peasant. 

The portrait is one of Cézanne’s earliest masterpieces. In color it reminds us of Dau- 
mier’s palette. Still the drawing and somewhat ruthless characterization of the subject, 
combined with the use of the palette knife in establishing his planes in broad masses, 
mark the work as his own. In fact, in depth of psychological penetration he goes beyond 
his illustrious forerunner, and we can already measure in this early work the importance 
of the courageous step he took in laying the accentuation on characterization and drama, 
instead of following the Impressionists’ method of beginning with problems of color and 
form. Cézanne understood from the beginning that objectivity in observation was essen- 
tial before all else, if Impressionism was to gain in solidity. He realized the necessity of 
identifying himself with his subject from the inside and following out its plastic logic. 
He followed this point of view throughout his life, to its last consequences. 


On canvas 
Height 16 inches, width 1234 inches 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Pellerin, Paris 


PUBLISHED 


“Cézanne und sein Kreis’’ by Meier-Graefe, p. 84 


L’Estaque by Cézanne 


Framed by overhanging branches, down a wooded hill, lies the village of Estaque, with 
its brown roofs and factory chimneys. Beyond, the blue sea stretches out, closed on the 
left by a promontory. On the right an island runs parallel to the tender blue horizon. 

This work was painted by the artist in his lightest vein and without any modifications. 
The colors are reminiscent of Japanese prints, but the organization of space in its perfect 
cohesion is more compactly conceived than it ever was possible for Japanese artists to do. 

Cézanne understood perfectly nature's functional activity, and set down his observa- 
tions in a playful manner which became increasingly characteristic of his work as he 
became older. 


On canvas 
Height 2314 inches, width 2814 inches 


179 


Portrait of Madame Cézanne by Cézanne 


The artist's wife is seated in a high-backed chair, her body turned slightly to the right. 
The rich raspberry-red of her dress enhances the green upholstery of the chair, which is 
brocaded with patterns of red. Red and green are in their turn heightened and enriched 
by the cool tones of the wall, gray-blue above and greenish-gray below, divided by a 
broad horizontal band. Disturbed neither by violent contrast nor by powerful accent, 
the eye is free to wander happily in and out among the forms, sensing their fullness, 
happy in their spacious distribution, content in their classic calm. 

In this late work Cézanne attained an ease and simplicity that are amazing as the out- 
come of his early battles with pigment. The easy flow of line and the simple flow of color 
indicate a mind that realized tranquillity with maturity. 


On canvas 
Height 3134 inches, width 25 inches 


PUBLISHED 
“Cézanne und sein Kreis’’ by Meier-Graefe, p. 166 


180 


GEORGES SEURAT 


Georges Seurat was born in 1859 in Paris. At the age of sixteen he left school to enter 
the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he studied for four years under Henri Lehmann, a pupil 
of Ingres. After passing through practically all the methods of painting which had 
been used by the old masters, Seurat read the scientific writings of Chevreuil, Helmholtz, 
Humbert de Superville, Charles Henry, as well as Ogden N. Rood’s (Columbia Uni- 
versity) book on the spectrum. His study of these works was instrumental in formu- 
lating his theory of the division of light in its reaction upon surface texture, a problem 
which the Impressionists had vigorously pursued and which Seurat brought toits greatest 
development. 

In 1882, after having passed through the military service, Seurat started to develop 
his theories for the elaboration of those large compositions for which he became famous. 
By compiling sketches and drawings of his subject, he gradually transferred the compo- 
nent parts of his vision into larger and more complex units. In 1884 his first large 
composition, ‘La Baignade,’’ was completed (exhibited at the Indépendants after refusal 
by the Salon); in 1886 “Un Aprés-midi a la Grande Jatte’’ executed in the divisionist 
method (Pointillism); in 1888 “Les Passeuses;’”’ in 1889 ‘La Parade” and “Le Chahut;” 
in 1890 “Le Cirque.” 

Seurat died in Paris in 1891. 


One of the most important figures in the group of men who were changing the visual 
outlook of modern art was Georges Seurat. Dissatisfied with the Classicist method, he 
turned early to Impressionism, and adding to the achievements of that method the law 
of spectral division, he achieved the highest degree of atmospheric vibration which had 
been attained so far. Division, called in derision Pointillism, however, was not the valu- 
able addition to art it generally has been presumed to be, and Seurat probably would have 
been forgotten if his merits had been based exclusively on this theory. His importance 
lies rather in his experiments to discover how naturalistic observations can be abstracted 
into vision and how abstract facts are assembled into composition. Seurat derived the 
initial idea of the division of colors from Delacroix. Delacroix stated this theory in clear 
terms: “Il est indispensable de passer (les tons) l'un aprés l'autre et non pas de les méler 
sur la palette. Il est bon que les touches ne soient pas materiellement fondues. Elles se 
fondent naturellement a une distance voulue par la loi sympathique qui les a associés. La 
couleur obtient ainsi plus d’énergie et de fraicheur. L'influence des lignes principales est 
immense dans une composition.’ Here Seurat found that the basis for compositional 
unity resides in certain coloristic linear laws. 

In 1889 Seurat dictated his ideas of these laws to Jules Christophe with the following 
words: ‘‘L’art c’est Il’harmonie, l’harmonie c’est l’analogie des contraires (contrastes) — 
l’analogie des semblables (dégradés), de ton—de teinte: c’est 4 dire le rouge et sa com- 


183 


plémentaire: le vert, l’orange et le bleu, le jaune et le violet; de la ligne—c’est a dire la 
direction surl’horizontale. Les diverses harmonies sont combinées en calmes, gaies, tristes; 
la gaieté du ton, c'est la dominante chaude de ligne —les directions montantes (au dessus 
de l’horizontale) ; le calme de ton, c’est l’égalité du sombre au clair, du chaud et du froid 
pour la teinte — de l’horizontale pour la ligne. Le triste de ton, c’est la dominante sombre 
de teinte, la dominante froide — et de ligne les directions abaissées.”’ (Burlington Magazine 
1920, p. 121. Essay by André Salmon) . 

Seurat thus applied himself to the task of changing his naturalistic make-up to become 
an abstract perceiver, and his attempt is one of the most interesting experiments an artist 
ever has made with his own psychology. His procedure was to absorb each single subject 
by making simple studies of it, which through repetition possessed an increasing degree 
of abstraction. He was in this way able to prepare for the final composition. Yet his hope 
to reach abstract unity conflicted with his color theory, which, after all, was only a 
further development of the old concept of surface reactions, and in consequence, he 
would have been forced to divest himself of this method in the end if he wanted to 
succeed. 

Unfortunately, a premature death interrupted his promising career when he was just 
beginning to gain a spontaneous and psychologically unified grasp of his observations. 

He saw the motif in motion and how, through color and line, forms are associated, 
but he missed the point of understanding how complete unity is achieved. He did not 
yet see that this depends not on the mastery of optical laws but on imaginative control. 

The few pictures which he has left remain the important achievement of a man who 
was endowed with a penetrating understanding of life, an incisive intellect through 
which he rose in his aesthetic thinking to heights formerly unknown. 


184 


Reproduced on following page: 
UN APRES-MIDI A LA GRANDE JATTE 


‘ 
i \ 
\ 
Pi 
ry 
Lew 
prety ics ’ i i fe 
© ricae ery 
Heats 
? Je i a 
; J : ae | n o 
ae , sag 


Un Apreés-midi a la Grande Jatte by Seurat 


On the slope of the Seine, which runs from the left to the middle background, men, women 
and children are seated under trees, facing the enchanting spectacle of the river on a 
summer day. Sail and row boats are gliding over the water; at the left a young girl is 
fishing with a rod; a workman in a red blouse is reclining comfortably on the grass. 
From the right a pair of promenaders, a lady and gentleman, both elegantly dressed, 
leading a monkey, as was then the fashion, walk slowly and with deliberation under the 
trees. In the background other groups are seen chatting leisurely with that poise and 
grace so characteristically Parisian. 

Seen through the vibration of diffused light, all the forms seem to be dissolved in the 
warm atmosphere, yet each individual form is observed and seized in its particular traits. 
With nervous alertness the silhouettes and masses are clearly defined and grouped in a 
well-balanced composition. Seurat has here applied his system of horizontals in relation 
to verticals. Posed on the horizontal base of the canvas, all forms in the picture tend 
upward, reinforced in this tendency by the verticality of the figures whose outlines 
are attracted to the urging parallelism of the trees. 


On canvas, 1884 
Height 2734 inches, width 41 inches 


FORMER COLLECTION 
Felix Fénéon, Paris 


PUBLISHED 
“Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Modernen Kunst’ by Meier-Graefe, vol.1, p. 232 
vol. 111 p. 102 

“Georges Seurat” by Walter Pach, p. 22 

Galleries Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1920, Catalogue No. 22 


EXHIBITED 
Indépendants, Paris, 1892 

Bureaux des Revue Blanche, Paris, 1900 
Bourgeois Galleries, New York, 1918 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1924 


A larger version of the same subject is in the collection of Mr. Frederick Bartlett, 
Chicago (now in the Chicago Art Institute). 


186 — 


HENRI ROUSSEAU 


Henri Rousseau was born in 1844 at Laval (Mayence) the son ofa laborer. As a young 
man he was employed for some time in a grocery store; he served in the army, and par- 
ticipated as a military musician in the Mexican expedition. In 1870 he was a sergeant in 
the French army, and after demobilization was given a position in the toll system of the 
city of Paris. 

His simple nature was not fitted for such work, and as two other officials by the name 
of Rousseau were in the service, instead of receiving the usual title of “‘gabelou,’” he 
was nicknamed the “douanier.’’ In the meantime he married and became the father of a 
daughter. His wife died and he remarried. After his retirement from the city toll system, 
his wife opened a small shop in which she sold writing supplies and her husband’s 
pictures. 

Many anecdotes are current regarding Rousseau’s beginnings as an artist. His friend, 
Alfred Jarry (called ‘“pére Ubu’), who came from the same neighborhood as did Rous- 
seau, is credited with being the first to encourage him to paint. Others relate that Gauguin 
made a wager that the first absolutely naive man would make an excellent painter; 
friends selected Rousseau for the experiment and he turned out to be a great artist. ‘‘Si 
non € vero, ben trovato.”’ Guillaume Apollinaire credits Rémy de Gourmont with having 
discovered Rousseau. I am inclined to believe that Rousseau painted from childhood, be- 
cause some of his early pictures have the earmarks of child art. In time, the control of his 
mind and technique increased and in his old age developed to complete mastery. Still, 
the historians will have difficulty in establishing the exact chronology of Rousseau’s 
works on account of the artist’s curious mental disposition. He considered painting not 
so much as an art but as a métier, like any other. When he received an order for a 
portrait or a landscape, the question of payment dictated the result. If the patron paid 
well Rousseau painted a good picture; if the patron was stingy, the quality of the work 
was in accordance. 

Yet, during the whole of his life material advantages were of small importance to him. 
He made just as much money as he needed by giving music lessons, teaching drawing and 
painting, and copying papers for a lawyer. He played the violin and flute well, wrote 
poetry, and once offered a play to the Comédie Francaise, which was refused with the 
polite remark that the expenditure of trying it would be too great. 

Rousseau was a regular exhibitor at the “Indépendants”’ for thirty-four years with 
only two exceptions, and his work was yearly the point on which the derision of jour- 
nalists who wished to write against modern art was focused. Ridicule followed Rousseau 
until his death, just as the reputation of an anarchist pursued Cézanne. Finally the over- 
whelming impression of his later pictures brought Rousseau recognition within a limited 
circle of artists and writers and the people of the quarter of Plaisance, where he resided. 


189 


Guillaume Apollinaire, Odilon Redon, Picasso, Marie Laurencin and several other French 
artists must be credited with having recognized Rousseau’s genius. Guillaume Apolli- 
naire, in his book, “‘Anecdotiques,” gives us a graphic picture of the douanier, which 
throws light on so many peculiarities of his character that it is worth reproducing in part: 

‘The douanier was discovered by Alfred Jarry, who was acquainted with Rousseau’s 
father. But really, I believe the simplicity of the man had fascinated Jarry more than his 
qualities as a painter. It was Rémy de Gourmont who was, undoubtedly, the first to en- 
courage the work of the ‘primitif.’ They met occasionally at various places on the left 
bank of the Seine where Rousseau played melodies of his own composition on his violin 
and made little girls sing songs in vogue at the moment. Music afforded the inspiration 
to painting for Rousseau as did the proverbial violin of Ingres. Without the violin of the 
douanier we would not have seen those strange scenes, which are the unique contribu- 
tion of American exoticism to the plastic arts. Rousseau had, indeed, been in America 
where he served in the French army during the Mexican war. When he was questioned 
on this epoch in his life, he seems not to have remembered anything other than the fruits 
which he had seen there and which the soldiers had been forbidden to eat. But his eyes 
preserved other memories: the forests of the tropics, monkeys and fantastic flowers. War 
played an important part in his life. During 1870 the presence of mind of Sergeant Rous- 
seau was instrumental in saving some unknown town from the horrors of civil war. He 
loved to relate in detail the circumstances of his act, and his voice, like an old man’s, had 
curious proud inflections when he told the story of having been acclaimed by the shouts 
of people and army: ‘Vive le sergent Rousseau.’ 

‘Those who knew Rousseau remember his disposition to believe in ghosts. He had met 
them everywhere and one of them had tortured him for more than a year, during the time 
when he was in the customs service. Following a complicated affair of a check, which 
he had not understood well, Rousseau once was condemned by the ‘cour d’assises.’ Nev- 
ertheless, he profited by the Béranger law. He had been imprudent rather than criminal, 
having been misled by a former music pupil. When Rousseau heard that he had benefited 
by the law of postponement the douanier could not conceal his joy and answered with 
great politeness, ‘Mon président, I thank you, and if you will allow me, I shall paint the 
portrait of your wife.’ This affair afflicted his old age. 

‘He was always in love. First with a Polish lady, and then two women of whom he 
has left us simple and gracious portraits. At sixty-four years of age he fell in love with a 
woman of fifty-four who asked him to marry her. He went to her parents to ask for the 
hand of their daughter but they would not hear of it, saying that he had been convicted - 
in a court of law and that he was a ridiculous painter. The douanier was desolate. He 
went to his friends to ask for certificates guaranteeing his talent and honesty. Touched 
by his dilemma, I wrote such a certificate. His dealer, M. Vollard, also wrote one for him 
on ‘papier timbré.’ I believe that the girl did not like him. He paid five thousand francs 
one day for jewels which he gave her, and she did not even attend his funeral. 


190 


“Rousseau lived miserably and laboriously after he began to paint. He painted many 
portraits for small merchants of Plaisance. During the last years of his life foreigners be- 
gan to buy his pictures. Vollard ordered some from him and the douanier knew a little 
comfort. But only for a short time. Love had made him extravagant and obliged him to 
spend for his sweetheart all that he had put aside. 

“Rousseau loved to give soirées. When he invited writers, painters, beautiful foreign 
ladies and girls of his neighborhood, his pupils would give a little concert, someone would 
recite verses and Rousseau would sing gay songs of his former years. After drinking a 
glass or two, one would go away happy to have passed a few hours in the company of 
such a good man. 

“When he painted a portrait he was very calm. Before beginning, he would take the 
measurements of the sitter, noting the figures on the canvas and reduce them exactly 
to the size of the stretcher. To amuse himself while working, the douanier would sing 
songs of the time when he was employed in the toll service:‘Le Vin de Suresnes,’ or ‘Aie, 
aic, aic, j ai mal aux dents, “La Puce,’ etc.” 

Rousseau’s work gradually became better known and during the last years of his life 
one of his monumental jungle pictures was exhibited in a small room in the Salon d’Au- 
tomne with one of Maillol’s sculptures. 

In 1908 Picasso gave a banquet in Rousseau’s honor which has become famous in the 
annals of modern art. 

Rousseau died in 1910 at the Necker hospital, in Paris. 


L' art primitif procede del esprit et emploie la nature. 

La vérité, c'est V art cérébral pur, cest V art primitif. 

PAUL GAUGUIN 

Rousseau has been compared to Don Quixote, and no better analogy could apply to his 
mind—so impractical in the ordinary concerns of existence, so wise in art—even, so su- 
premely wise. Where others succeeded, he failed, and where all the artists of our time 
failed, he succeeded. For a century artists have striven to again make painting a homo- 
geneous instrument to be used without the restrictions of an official school or optical 
tricks. They circled around the problem without finding its center, and one day the solu- 
tion was found by a man whom everybody considered a fool. During the disputes which 
dragged art from one theory to another, Rousseau quietly perfected his style by enlarg- 
ing his vision of nature, men and animals, and finally dominated his observations and 
phantasy by the control of his mind. He encountered no difficulty in rendering his ob- 
servations simultaneous. The certitude of a mind which knows exactly what can be 
achieved is impressed on all his work. He was and still is, therefore, more modern than 
any of the artists of the present time. Endowed with the gift of mental order, he created 
with such ease and lightness of touch that we must search in Oriental art for comparisons. 
The appearance of such a personality signifies, therefore, nothing less than a revolt 


I9I 


against all our former conceptions. This revolution has been gaining inimpetus s 
Renaissance; it has been lost sometimes in the impasses of optical Soe and ae 


mind. 

Rousseau’s approach and method are natural to the child, to the man in 
the earth, and to those who see beyond the dualism of ideas and instincts 
old as the world, goes back in truth to the day when human beings fir 
form their creative energy into images. 


192 


Reproduced on following pages: 
THE JUNGLE (LION AND BUFFALO) 


LE REPAS DU LION 


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The Jungle (Lion and Buffalo) b Rousseau 


a sharp silhouette against the clear evening Phe pales 
stems and branches toward the sky. Dark hills loom in 
partly concealed by ferns and grass, a lion and a buffalo 
their eyes and ears alert to the dangers of the silent forest, 


On canvas : | i. et oe 7 
Height 1434 inches, width 174 inches 
Signed at the left: H. Rousseau — eat ae 


194 


Le Repas du Lion 4y Rousseau 


Against distant hills, behind which the sun descends slowly, the jungle with its dense 
foliage rises with irresistible urge from a fertile soil. Luxuriant flowers play in contrast- 
ing radiance against the delicate, juicy green of large-leafed plants and trees. Below the 
sun, in the center of the composition, a lion is fighting a death struggle with a crocodile, 
and finding himself detected, he stares in astonishment at the spectator. 

The whole composition is rushing skyward in rising parallels, modulated by the slop- 
ing hill and by the sinking sun, which carries the action in contrapuntal motion toward 
the dramatic fight of the lion and crocodile, stopping on the sharp edge of a green blade 
of grass, which serves as a final steadying chord. 


On canvas 
Height 4434 inches, width 63 inches 
Signed at the right: Henri Rousseau 


FORMER COLLECTION 


Dr. Keller, Aachen, Germany 


PUBLISHED 
“Henri Rousseau’ by Adolphe Basler, pl. 48 


EXHIBITED 


Museum of Winterthur, Switzerland, 1921 
Bourgeois Galleries, New York, 1923 


eae 


HENRI MATISSE 


Henri Matisse was born at Cateau-Cambrésis (Nord) December 31, 1869. His first choice 
of profession was that of a barrister and he went to Paris in 1892 to take his final degree. 
Here his budding desire to become an artist became all-powerful and he abandoned the 
legal career for art. He received his first training as a painter at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, 
studying under Bouguereau and Géréme. He also frequented the studio of Gustave 
Moreau and the Louvre, where especially the art of Chardin was congenial to him. His 
first picture—a still life representing books and a candle—was entirely in the Chardin 
tradition. A few other pictures of this same type were shown at the Salon du Champ de 
Mars, several of which were bought by the Department of Fine Arts, testifying that he 
was considered sane, safe and respectable. Success was then assured and if Matisse had 
been willing to produce peacefully in the same vein, much struggle and misunderstanding 
would have been spared to him. But his temperament and intellect demanded a wider 
and deeper acquaintance with art and life than his study of the Eighteenth Century 
could offer. 

Soon the Impressionists began to attract him. He went through an Impressionistic 
period, turned to Pointillism, touched Gauguin and found in Cézanne a resting point— 
fora short time. His searching mind wandered on. He tried to use the mechanistic theories 
of his time without falling into Cubism—he is in fact credited with having invented the 
word Cubism in derision. Still, for a few years he was under the influence of pictorial 
mechanism and his work shows the effect of experimentation. In the meantime he had 
exhibited in 1896 at the Nationale des Beaux Arts, after traveling for some time in foreign 
countries. During two years spent in Morocco he came in contact with oriental simplicity 
and the work of the primitives began to show him their abstract possibilities. 

For some years, beginning in 1909, Matisse directed a school of painting, but re- 
nounced teaching when he saw that his numerous pupils were inclined more to imitate 
him than to find their own personality. 

From 1910 to 1914 Matisse went through a period of the greatest experimental 
fermentation, and it was during this time that his most daring pictures were painted, 
creating a public opinion hostile to him and his work, which today still is working 
actively against the recognition of his genuine talent. A few years earlier he shocked 
visitors to exhibitions with his experiments in sculpture, a phase of work which he aban- 
doned after a time. 

Since 1903 Matisse has exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne, and a number of 
one-man exhibitions of his work have taken place in 1904, 1912 and 1918 in Paris, others 
in England, Germany, Switzerland, Russia and America. Russia possesses in the Tschou- 
kine collection (Moscow) many of his principal works: the portrait of his wife, the Moor 
of the Riff, Le Désert, etc. Following the dispersal of the famous Stein collection in 
Paris, other works found their way to Norway, Denmark and America, demonstrating 


nye 


how his personality, despite general hostility, has imposed itself on his contemporaries 

through the sheer force of his keen observation and vital sense of organization, which, 

although affected by experimentation, give a powerful impulse to all of his works. 
Matisse lives in Paris and in the Midi. 


Matisse’s conception of space-function is more related to the Impressionists than to 
the abstract thinkers who followed them. However, his restless intellect was not sat- 
isfied with the limitations of his own temperament; hence he has searched during the 
greater part of his career for a method which could unify the disparate elements of his 
observations. He tried to follow Cézanne’s form organization, and fora short time applied 
the method akin to the cubistic viewpoint, only to retire from the impasse as soon as 
he realized the consequences. Like all other artists of the younger generation, he went 
to Giotto, the Primitives, Oriental and Negro art for enlightenment on the methods of 
abstract organization. For some time he was under the spell of Henri Rousseau and the 
art of children in the hunt for the secret of abstract simplicity. In this way he uncon- 
sciously became the protagonist of a new form of retrospection, which tinted most of 
his work, during the period of development, with the element of struggle and conflict. 

The psychological effect of this conflict expressed itself in a pessimistic and sardonic 
trend of observation, and although he was endowed with a rich coloristic sensibility 
which he developed to great perfection by the study of color-complementaries, his forms 
took on a distorted aspect, reflecting the wish to readjust the demands of his eye and 
touch to the clear understanding of a mind which saw that art must be homogeneous in 
all its parts. The theoretical ferment in his personality has strongly affected his younger 
contemporaries, and is responsible for much confusion and retrospection parading as 
modernism. | 

The result of a life filled with observations of man, life and nature has added to his 
former method a wealth of luminous harmonies which, combined with a dashing brush 
technique, gives to his later work the impression of unrestricted freedom and enjoyment. 


200 


D bs 


i in 


Reproduced on following pages: 

; PORTRAIT DE FEMME ACCOUDEE SUR UN FAUTEUIL 
| STILL LIFE 

L'ETE— JEUNE FEMME DANS UN FAUTEUIL 


Portrait de Femme Accoudée sur un Fauteuil by Matisse 


Sitting in a yellow-brown armchair against a green background, a young woman, dressed 
in a greyish-white blouse, stares thoughtfully at the spectator. Her head reposes on her 
right hand; one of her dimpled fingers plays with a long curl which falls over her shoulder. 

The work is conceived almost entirely in flat masses, with the exception of the body, 
which shows a slight effect of modelling. The curves of the forms lean with a caressing 
insistence one against the other, similar to the lines in Japanese prints. 


On panel 
Height 21 inches, width 18 inches 


Signed at the upper right: Henri Matisse 


FORMER COLLECTION 
D. Kelekian, Paris 


PUBLISHED 


Burlington Magazine, 1920, p. 304, Essay by Roger Fry 


202 


pe 


PRA HEM 


% 


Still Life by Matisse 


Pink tuberoses with broad-rimmed leaves stand in a blue vase on a table with white 
linen. Behind the vase is an old fashioned mirror in a gold frame, in which various objects 
are reflected. 

Conceived in broad masses, strewn with soft touches of the brush on the canvas, the 
contrasting play of delicate colors against sky-blues is rendered with the happiest result. 


On canvas 
Signed at the right: Henri Matisse 1920 
Height 251% inches, width 2034 inches 


205 


baabiceee of Matisse’s ee janeaomae manner Pas BE he 
tion is built wp in patterns of rose and green and pink, heightened with 
black against a cream ground. In contrast with the flat ground, the bod 
retain its fullness, the discrepancy being softened by the amar 
light. is 


On canvas 


Height 2134 inches, width 15 inches 
Signed at lower right: Henri Matisse 


206 


PABLO RUIS PICASSO 


Pablo R. Picasso was born at Malaga in 1881. The name Picasso was adopted by the 
artist (it was the name of his mother). His father was a drawing teacher, and through 
him the son so rapidly acquired the rudiments of the métier that he astonished his friends 
by the precocity of his talent. In addition to that of his father, Greco’s influence is strongly 
manifest in his early work. In 1887 his family went to Barcelona, where he won the third 
medal at the Exposition des Beaux Arts. Later he spent some months in Madrid, where 
he published a review called ‘‘Renascimento.”’ 

Influenced from then on by Toulouse-Lautrec’s style and Carriére’s mentality, he 
sought his development in the sympathetic atmosphere of Paris, and attracted the atten- 
tion of Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet and art critic who introduced him to the public. 

Picasso owes much to the literature of pessimism, such as the writings of Mallarmé and 
Rimbaud, which affected his work. At the same time, Cézanne’s intellectual influence in 
the direction of form organization is obvious; and finding Cézanne’s ideas of cubes and 
cylinders realized in Negro art, Picasso and Braque applied their method in 1907 to their 
Own vision. Picasso's idea was that through the use of cubes and cylinders, and dynamic 
lines and color complementaries as used by Seurat, he could create an art of perfect equi- 
librium which would replace the orgiastic tendencies of the Post-Impressionists. The 
movement which resulted from Picasso’s attempt has been called Cubism, and has bred 
a number of other movements with a similar outlook. 

By 1913 Picasso had gradually become realistic again, although the general plan re- 
mained cubistic. He also used pieces of paper and other material, interpolated in the 
general plan of his color arrangement, to arrive at a flat juxtaposition of color, and thus 
avoid the necessity of modelling. 

By 1917 he seemed to have exhausted all the possibilities of Cubism, and has since 
then gradually re-entered reality, relying especially on the contour method to sustain 
the massing of the different forms of his composition. 


No other artist in our time can look back on a more kaleidoscopic career than can 
Picasso, and if we did not already possess much literature regarding his life, the attempt 
to outline and reconstruct the development of his work, which superficially considered 
seems disconnected and illogical, would remain futile. Still, where apparent disorder 
reigns, we find on closer study a painter of decidedly forceful temperament, which has 
led him through the devious ways of intellectual escape around the circle of his own 
nature. | 

Picasso started in his youth as a draftsman of the Classicist type, but his impetuous 
temperament was not fully satisfied with this viewpoint, and he turned to Greco and 
Toulouse-Lautrec for aid in the direction of pictorial freedom. The literature of the 
French pessimistic school, which expressed the general restiveness and dissatisfaction of 


209 


the time, served him as a further stimulus in the same direction; the endeavor of writers 
such as Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Mallarmé to depict life as a drama, full of 
tragedy and comedy, influenced his work after his arrival in Paris. 

Such a mentality was by nature inclined to theoretical speculation, and it is, therefore, 
quite plausible that after a wide review of former realistic methods he should also try his 
hand, like his predecessors, at solving the problem of abstract painting. Cézanne’s theory 


about cubes and cylinders seemed the ideal solution. By reducing all his forms and com- | 


pressing them gradually into geometrical forms, he thought he had found a new and 
perfect art. What remained was nothing else than another kind of naturalistic space 
concept consisting simply of links and angles, which make forms move mechanically in 
space. 

The fear of nature during the Renaissance produced mechanical line rigidity, and the 
fear of the Post-Impressionists and their naturalistic organism produced the mechanistic 
asceticism of Picasso, called Cubism. His invention was, therefore, nothing less than a 
further mechanization of art, or rather the culmination of the Classicist tendency which 
started with the rigid laws of perspective. Modern painting has tried for one hundred 
years to escape from the consequences of optical and mechanical tricks, only to return 
again with Picasso’s new theory to even greater complications. After trying for about 
eight years to perfect his discovery, Picasso’s work reached such a state of nervous 
tension that a reversal was necessary. This reversal took place under the influence of 
Rousseau’s art, the intrinsic importance of which as the actual solution of abstract 
thinking and imagery was by that time well understood. 

In his later cubistic style, under the influence of Rousseau, Picasso juxtaposes all his 
forms in clearly defined patterns and finally emerges from Cubism in 1918 to return to his 
former naturalistic concept. The external changes which in the meantime his art had 
undergone did not fundamentally affect his psychology, and Cubism only added to his 
method a more sardonic trend of thought, a brilliant metallic palette and a more rigid 
use of lines, showing his inclination to an optical discipline. Since then he has reverted to 
Classicism, trying to reconcile Ingres’ contour-discipline with the i imaginative order of 
Rousseau, in order to evade the trap of naturalism. 

Picasso is still in his forties, and his powerful and restless intellect makes it impossible 
to forecast his future development. A characteristic product of the transition period, 
standing between the past and the future, he still is bound as a painter by his initial 
training, which was purely naturalistic. Yet within the naturalistic concept and in 
moments of complete abandon to the images of his phantasy, when he has not been 
tempted to solve pictorial problems, he has created forceful works which will survive 
those in which he tried to discipline himself into a rigid state of mind. 


210 


Reproduced on following pages: 
THE DANCER 

FEMME ACCOUDEE 
PIERROT 


The Dancer dy Picasso i 


The head and shoulders of the dancer are turned in profil to de spectator 
morbid face arises out of an ocean of multi-colored skirts, in which dots 
dark blue are married successively with purple, red, white and orange on a 
green. The pallor of the delicate face is enhanced by the hat of dark pits = 
ostrich feathers. The fine chin rests on a white gloved hand. — 

The sparkling colors in the dress and background only s serve toe 
the face of purposeful intensity. 


On canvas 


Height 26 inches, width 20 inches 
Signed at lower right: Picasso 


O19. 


Femme Accoudée by Picasso 


A woman, squatting on the ground, body bent forward, knees doubled up, head resting 
on hands. The face is haggard, the eyes of an unnatural brightness, the cheeks hollow 
and feverish. 

The color is laid on very thinly, with a seeming purposelessness which heightens its 
squalid character, the prevailing blue being streaked with browns and reds in the wom- 
an’s skirt to act as transition to the hectic yellow of the face. The intensity of the face, 
in sharp contrast with the sagging folds of the woman's clothes, is reinforced by the bold, 
powerful outline of the bust. 

A luminous blue passage at upper left provides happy relief for the all too somber 
character of the picture. 


On coarse canvas 


Height 2414 inches, width 18! inches 
Signed at upper right: Picasso 


215 


Pierrot by Picasso : ALO A a haat 
sive. His head is slightly bowed and He pulls absent-mindedly 2 at his one a I i 
isin his right hand. 


in flowing contrasts over the intricate design of pea s costume, giving 
of liquid fire running over his body. 


On canvas 
Height 26 inches, width 20 inches 
Signed at the left: Picasso '18 


A pencil drawing of the same subject is reproduced in i 
1922, No. 31 


216 


ANDRE DERAIN 


André Derain was born at Chatou (Seine et Oise) June 10, 1880. After completing his 
attendance at the Ecole Normale, he decided to study painting. Vlaminck and Derain 
became great friends at this time, both using the same studio at Chatou. Meeting 
Matisse, Picasso, Braque and Guillaume Apollinaire gave a new directness to Derain’s 
mind. From 1914 to 1918 he served in the world war. 

André Derain composed for the Russian ballet of Diaghileff the decorations for “La 
Boutique Fantasque.”’ In these decorations he attempted to reconcile the spirit of Poussin 
with that of Henri Rousseau. 


Like Matisse and Picasso, Derain has been preoccupied with a visual discipline through 
which he tries to overcome his initial impressionistic training. Following the example of 
his friends, he proceeds by reduction of optical facts, attempting in this way to attain the 
compactness of Giotto and the Primitives. 

Gifted with a temperament of great solidity and energy, he has been a leader of the 
younger generation; but, his style being still realistic and impressionistic, he must be 
considered a further link in the latter movement; in fact, in some of his later work he 
returns to the conceptions dear to the Realists. 


Reproduced on following pages: 

STILL LIFE 

PORTRAIT OF A BOY 

PORTRAIT OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN 


219 


On the brown wooden top ofa table, Lepeeanteh oem ol n op 
lie part of a loaf of bread, a pear and a few plums, their ound forms 
sharp angular folds of the paper. | vem 
Derain shows himself at his best in this little picture. Hote 
forms with a clear Per okee oP by sane ei oa in sharp 
cool tones. 


On canvas 
Height 734 inches, width 10 inches En pas : 
Signed at the right: Derain oven 


In the private collection of Sam A. ae 
s ee 
Fe 


220 


. 
’ 
: ss (. 
’ 


Portrait of a Boy dy Derain 


A little boy dressed in a whitish blouse which leaves the throat exposed, faces the 
spectator, his eyes wide open as if dreaming. A small stubby nose and bent mouth and 


large cranium reveal a puzzled expression. Body and head stand out against a mottled 
background of light blue-grey. 


On canvas 
Height 11 inches, width 11 inches 


Signed at the right: A. Derain 


In the private collection of Sam A. Lewisohn 


223 


Portrait of an Englishwoman by Derain 


Turned slightly to the left, a woman of about thirty years of age is seated erect, absorbed 
in her thoughts, which seem to drift into the far-away distance. A stubborn thin-boned 
face, with sharp-edged nose, compressed mouth and weary eyes, reveals through its ner- 
vous, relentless intensity the drama which seems to take place in her mind. From the base 
of her lap, where her hands play aimlessly with pink flowers over a white and blue dress, 
her robust body with square powerful shoulders arises menacingly into a long, muscular 
neck, which is crowned with the tragic mask of a volcanic nature, burned in the cold 
passion of an inner struggle. Straight brown hair covered with a kerchief stands out 
against light green foliage. To the right, the sky of turquoise blue widens the pe Se of the 
scene into the luminous distance. 

With this remarkable portrait Derain has entered the ranks of the great students of 
character, which began in our time with Goya and Manet and ended with Cézanne and 
van Gogh. Indeed, here we feel again something of Vincent’s tragic conception of life: 
a supreme futility reigning over all mortals, who aimlessly try to emerge from the circle 
of their instincts. Derain put his profound observations on this canvas in light and rapid 
touches, indicating with the greatest delicacy—like a Chinese painter—the hands, the 
breathing body, the landscape, and elaborating with meticulous care the neck and 
face, wherein the drama is powerfully centered. 


On canvas 


Height 41 inches; width 26% inches 
Signed at the left: A. Derain 


224 


~ 


MAURICE DE VLAMINCK 


M. de Vlaminck was born in Paris, April 4, 1876. His family is of Flemish origin. From 
his father he learned to play the violin, which served as a means of livelihood until he 
was thirty-five years of age. During these years of hardship he devoted much time to 
athletics and gained several bicycle championships. 

Frequent bicycle excursions awakened his love of nature, and his mind gradually 
turned to painting. He never expected to use his art as a means of livelihood, and only 
when success came to him spontaneously did he decide to give up his other occupations. 
His work for that reason has a playfulness which is absent in most of the French paintings 
of today. 


Reproduced on following pages: 
STILL LIFE 
LANDSCAPE 


227 


Still Life by Viaminde:?: 24) ama 
Ong an a porctlsin bowl tiled itt grate eae 


gave vent in this vivacious work to his decorative verve, v eminds 
and sense of balance, of wore done ea the ai aoe decorators of 


On canvas A PEAIN i Caen Vea 
Height 23 inches, surttiehe Bi el CONE tod 


Signed at the right: Vlaminck * 


228 


Landscape by Vlaminck 


In the center of the picture, a house with an open space before it. From the left, woods 
approach, while on the right two large trees with bulky trunks invite the eye to lose 
itself in the distance. 

Set down with the utmost playfulness, the splashes of green and red and yellow are 
controlled by cool areas of blue, passing from the opaque slate-blue shadows of the fore- 
ground to the liquid blue of the sky. 


On canvas 


Height 23 inches, width 2814 inches 
Signed at lower left: Vlaminck 


231 


MARIE LAURENCIN 


Marie Laurencin was born in Paris, October 31, 1885. She attended the Académie Laury. 
She exhibited for the first time at the “Indépendants” in 1906. She belonged to the 
“Cercle Apollinaire,”’ where the following artists and writers met: Max Jacob, Picasso, 
André Salmon, Derain, Braque, René Dupuy, Louis Codet, Fernand Fleuret, André Billy, 
Elémir Bourges, Roger Allard. Special exhibitions of her works were held at the galler- 
ies of Paul Rosenberg in 1921 and 1922, and at the exhibition of ““One Hundred Years 
of French Painting,’’ in Paris. 


In the long procession of painters whose names cover the annals of painting during the 
last centuries, we find only a few women, and one wonders why women have not been 
able to contribute a larger share to the artistic output of the past. Only five outstanding 
women painters are known to us since the Renaissance: Sophonisba Anguisciola, Rosalba 
Carriera, Mme. Vigée le Brun, Berthe Morisot and Marie Laurencin. In contrast with 
her predecessors, Marie Laurencin has not tried to adopt a pictorial system elaborated 
by men, but her art is the spontaneous expression of herself, having evolved from child- 
hood without the effects of self-consciousness, usually so pernicious from the age of 
puberty. She has kept the phantasy of her child life intact, life and experience adding to 
her imagination the subtle touch of sophistication and keen wit, without diminishing 
in any way her spontaneity. 

Due to this rare good fortune she has become the first modern exponent of feminine 
att. The student of her work is led through a delightful fairy garden where little girls 
play wistfully with gamboling deer, or sit enveloped in a luminous atmosphere looking 
into the mirror of their phantasy where strange and incomprehensible images appear in 
the flow of an elemental urge. Marie Laurencin is, as the French say, ‘‘tout-a-fait femme.” 
She paints herself and not the outside world, whose forms serve as a clothing for the 
symbols of her instincts. Standing at the opposite pole from Henri Rousseau, who objec- 
tively crystallized his observations into intellectual order, she is the first painter who has 
been capable of reaching beyond the absorbing tendencies of naturalism (which Renoir 
had already advanced to a high degree of perfection) to a point where complete mental 
abstraction is reached. 

That this achievement was made by a woman and not by a man is significant—an 
indication that the absorbing function of color is par excellence a feminine attribute. 
Regarded from this angle, the evolution of modern psychology, since Leonardo, has been 
stamped with feminism, and the struggle between absorbing optics and luminous pro- 
jection becomes in this way comprehensible. The examples of Marie Laurencin and 
Rousseau show, therefore, the fundamental differences in the use of vision, and conse- 
quently of color, which underlie the creative activities of men and women—their ex- 
ample paving the way for a further liberation of both types of art—that is, the adoption 


A533 


a ho ee ae 
BAS ip iS een 


Reproduced on following page: 
THE HUNTER 


On canvas ‘ 
Height 2534 inches, width 3134 inches 
sen in the upper right corner: Marie Taurencin, Pe 


236 


SCULPTURES 


RENE FRANCOIS AUGUSTE RODIN 


R. F. A. Rodin was born in Paris, November 12, 1840. His father came from Normandy 
and his mother from Lorraine. At the age of fourteen Rodin showed a decided talent for 
drawing, and shortly afterward entered the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. There he met 
Whistler, Fantin-Latour and Alphonse Legros, and received a few lessons from Carpeau, 
who was then professor of the modelling class. The school still was under the influence 
of the Eighteenth Century methods, which had in the beginning a distinct influence on 
Rodin’s mentality and style. 

Rodin attacked his métier with an incredible appetite for work—painting, modelling 
and drawing incessantly. In his eighteenth year he tried vainly to enter the Ecole des 
Beaux Arts, but as his parents were poor he was forced to make a living by working for 
an “‘ornemaniste.’’ He also became a workman for a sculptor and thus acquired a tech- 
nical training far exceeding the casual acquaintance with stone and bronze which is 
usually possessed by the professional sculptors of today. 

Rodin exhibited for the first time at the Salon of 1864, a bronze head, ‘““L’Homme au 
Nez Cassé”"—a work still under the influence of the antique. After the Franco-Prussian 
wat he departed for Belgium, where he executed, with his friend, Van Rasburg, a monu- 
ment for Antwerp in honor of one of the city’s mayors. Of other works executed during 
his five years’ sojourn in Belgium, ““L’Age d’Airain”’ is the most important—it was ex- 
hibited at the Salon of 1877 under the title:‘‘L’Homme, qui s’éveille a la Nature,” and 
was violently attacked on account of its unrestricted realism. An extensive polemic fol- 
lowed which ended in Rodin’s merit being recognized by the Sécrétaire des Beaux Arts, 
who gave him an order for a monument, which was the beginning of the “Porte d’Enfer.”’ 
In the year 1876 Rodin went to Italy, whence he returned with a vivid impression of 
Donatello and Michelangelo. In 1878 he made a long trip through France visiting the 
cathedrals, with the result that the subtle charm of Gothic art was added to his style. 
From this period dates his greatest achievement, and it seems as if a wave of creative fire 
had seized him which was arrested only by his death. 

During the period from 1879-93 he executed the life size sculpture: ““The Creation of 
Man—Adam and Eve,” the important bust “‘Bellone,’”’ and busts of S. M. Henley, Jean 
Paul Laurent, Carriére, Belleuse and Alphonse Legros. Still Rodin was forced to make his 
living by other means, and for this purpose he entered the porcelain manufactory of 
Sévres. It was there that he worked for years on the “Porte d’Enfer,’”’ a theme derived 
from Dante. This monument was crowned with the statue of Dante himself, a theme 
which was later transformed into the famous ‘‘Penseur”’ now placed before the Pantheon. 

From 1884 to 1896 the extentof his activity was prodigious, the outstanding accomplish- 
ment being the monument of Victor Hugo completed in 1896. During the same year the 
statue of Balzac appeared at the Salon, ordered by the Société des Gens de Lettres. A 
heated dispute arose as to where the statue should be placed, and Rodin was so painfully 


241 


surprised by the controversy that he withdrew the statue from the exhibition. In 1900 
he arranged a retrospective exhibition in a specially constructed pavilion in the Place 
d’Alma, which was instrumental in establishing his fame as one of the great artists of our 
time. 

In 1914 he published his book on the cathedrals of France. 

He died on November 17, 1917, at Meudon. 


Rodin’s activities as a sculptor were dominated by two literary figures and two sculp- 
tors, who stood watch over his life, determining the character of his style and his mental 
development. On the one side were Dante with his “Divina Commedia” and Baudelaire 
with his “Les Fleurs du Mal;” on the other, Donatello’s trenchant realism and Michel- 
angelo’s visions of a struggling world. He adopted their conflicts, adding them to his 
feverish wish to transcend the limits of palpable living matter. Especially congenial to 
him was the aesthetic sensuality of Baudelaire, and like.him, Rodin wandered through 
the labyrinth of man’s loves and fears, desires and terrors, never to find a point of rest. 

All the gradations of sense-exaltation from extreme ascetism through the springlike 
fields of budding desires to bacchanalian orgies were translated by him into clay, marble 
and bronze. In consequence his style became the expression of forces which flowed with- 
Out transition one into another, determining the forms in undulating contrasts of light 
and shadow, rich in surface beauty but without a clear structural interconnection. Rodin 
belongs, as Huneker has pointed out, to the tormented choir of souls whose work is 
colored with the bitterness of disappointment—he is one of the last Romanticists, like 
Carriére, Redon and others who sought an exit from the circle of the modern psychologi- 
cal development, extreme naturalism, without being able to find the issue. 


242 > 


Reproduced on following page: 


. THE DANAID 


The Danaid Jy Rodin 


Half kneeling, half lying, the Dan 
gee sieve. 


Made in 1890 Mists Areas eh 
Height 934 inches — ates 
Signed on the base: A. Rodin nc ae Sp 


“August Rodin, L’Ocuvre et l'Homme”’ by Judith lode, P 30 
“The Art of Rodin” by Louis Weinberg, no. 9 _ 


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EMILE ANTOINE BOURDELLE 


E. A. Bourdelle was born October 30, 1861, at Montauban (Tarn et Garonne). His father 
was a master wood-cutter, and gave the young Emile his first lessons in the métier of a 
sculptor. From a pupil of Ingres he learned drawing in an atelier above the Musée Ingres, 
in his home town. When he was fifteen years of age, his father sent him to Toulouse to 
study at the Beaux Arts, where he advanced himself in sculpture and also learned the 
rudiments of painting. 

In 1885 he went to Paris, where he became a pupil of Falguiére. He took a studio next 
to Dalou, where he lived until Dalou’s death in 1902. Before this, in 1900, he met Rodin, 
who, seeing his ability as a worker in marble, charged him not only with the execution 
of sculptures in stone, marble, etc., but permitted him to work from the model in his 
atelier. In 1909 Bourdelle left Rodin to go his own way. 


Bourdelle is commissioned at present with the execution of numerous monuments for 
France and other countries. 


WORKS 

Monument of General Alvéar 

Bas-relief for the Theatre of Marseilles 

Frescoes and reliefs: Théatre des Champs Elysées, Paris 
France Saluting the Arrival of the American Army 


Reproduced on following pages: 
BUST OF A YOUNG WOMAN 
HERAKLES 


247 


Bust of a Young Woman Jy Bourdelle | 


Seen full face with dainty mouth and vibrant nostrils, fe oe eyes half : 
seems to express a rich, animalistic nature. Her strong, healthy neck rises g 
the bust leading to fruit-like cheeks and a well-formed forehead. _ 


Height 1334 inches | 
Signed: Bourdelle 
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Herakles by Bourdelle 

Kneeling ona rock, his left foot firmly implanted against a large protruding rock, Herakles 
leans backward to draw his bow, which he holds in his uplifted left hand. His eyes 
turned upward are concentrated with energy on his prey in the air. The body is strained 


to its greatest effort, the muscles standing out bulkily. 


Height 1134 inches, width 19 inches 
Signed at the right, on the rock: Emile Antoine Bourdelle 


A larger version of the same subject is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 


251 


ARISTIDE MAILLOL 


Aristide Maillol was born December 8, 1861, at Banyuls (Roussillon) in the Pyrenees, the 
descendant of a family of fishermen and smugglers, who turned in the preceding genera- 
tion to wine culture. Until the boy grew up he lived with his blind grandfather, attended 
the school of the village, and later that of the city. In 1882 Maillol, who already had 
shown an inclination for art, went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under 
Cabanel. There he painted pictures for ten years. He then met Puvis de Chavannes, but 
did not receive any encouragement from him to become a painter. At the same time he 
began to make cartoons for tapestries which pleased Maurice Denis and won for him the 
friendship of Gauguin. In this way he passed six years, partly in the making of tapestries, 
partly in the modelling of earthenware, and not until his fortieth year did he turn to 
sculpture. 

Maillol lives during the winter in Paris (Marly-le-Roi) and in the summer at Banyuls. 


Reproduced on following page: 
JUNO 


253 


Juno by Maillol 


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In the sees collection of Sam ‘ Lewisohn 


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des Ponerinae E. Frapicr, Paris, Ne 38 


254 


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‘THE SPIRAL PRESS: NEW YORK 


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